Image: The ashy mining bee, Andrena cineraria, a key ground-nesting pollinator species for UK crop production. Shown visiting oilseed rape flowers. Credit: Steven Falk 

Conservation of wild bees in agricultural landscapes

Supervisor: Professor Lynn Dicks

This project will conduct a programme of field research to understand how, and why, wild bee communities respond to changes in farm and landscape management, focusing on  regenerative agriculture and the roles of floral resources, nesting resources, insecticide use and natural habitat features.

Type of work 

The student will design a programme of observations and experiments over at least two years, to test hypotheses to explain the mechanisms underlying differences in bee diversity, in agricultural landscapes with different structures and farms with different management. Research in our group suggests that spring-flying bee communities may be more diverse in arable farms following regenerative principles, that fruit set is higher in fruit-bearing hedgerow plants on such farms, and that ecotoxicity of insecticides can be a key driver of arthropod biodiversity.

The student will sample wild bee communities using a range of standard techniques, starting early to capture spring-emerging species. They will compare management types at field and/or landscape-scale, with replicated paired sampling designs, and monitor outcomes empirically and through modelling. Bees will be identified to species, allowing high resolution analyses of composition, diversity and functional diversity. Additional studies might focus on responses to changes in soil temperature and how this relates to emergence dates; predicting temperature niches or critical maximum temperatures for functionally important species; measuring pollination services to crops or wild plants provided by wild bees; or using dietary analysis or machine learning trait-matching models to build and analyse the structure and robustness of ecological networks involving bee communities.

This project will benefit from an ongoing partnership with two Farmer Cluster Groups focused on changing farm management towards regenerative techniques that enhance soil health (www.h3.ac.uk). The student will join a large team of collaborators, both nationally and internationally.

Training to be provided 

The student will receive training in experimental design, field survey techniques for wild bees, including specimen collection, preservation and identification, agronomy and transdisciplinary research in agriculture, GIS and spatial data analysis, ecosystem service modelling, data management, visualisation, and advanced ecological statistics using R

Importance of the area of research concerned

At global scale, pollinators provide several hundred billion US dollars in added value to the agriculture sector every year, through pollination of food crops. Their value is estimated at £615 million pounds a year in the UK alone. Around half of this service is provided by free-living wild insects, mainly bees. Pollinators also pollinate wild plants, providing a crucial ecological function that underpins fruit and seed production, and therefore provides food for many animal species and supports dynamic ecological processes, including succession, plant dispersal and migration. Yet wild bees are declining in diversity. Some species are declining rapidly, while others are increasing, and the mechanisms behind these changes are poorly understood. A diversity of pollinators increases the stability of the pollination service, and so, to maintain this stability, it is important to understand how management of landscapes, and productive fields influence bee diversity, particularly in the context of global climate change.

References 

Berthon K, Jaworski CC, Beacham JD, Jackson P, Leake J, McHugh NM, et al. (2024) Measuring the transition to regenerative agriculture in the UK with a co-designed experiment: design, methods and expected outcomes. Environmental Research: Food Systems. 1, 025007.Tschanz, P., S. Vogel, A. Walter, T. Keller & M. Albrecht (2023) Nesting of ground-nesting bees in arable fields is not associated with tillage system per se, but with distance to field edge, crop cover, soil and landscape context. Journal of Applied Ecology, 60, 158-169. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14317Zielonka NB, Shutt JD, Butler SJ, Dicks LV. (2024) Management practices, and not surrounding habitats, drive bird and arthropod biodiversity within vineyards. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 367, 108982.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2024.108982