Research & reports

Emilie E. Ellis, S. Campbell, Jill L. Edmondson · Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · Global

A large-scale assessment across three cities found up to a 43% reduction in species richness of bees, hoverflies, and nocturnal moths in urban horticultural sites along urbanization gradients. These declines are driven by taxon-specific landscape changes like reduced tree canopy and semi-natural habitat. Moths and hoverflies were particularly sensitive to urbanization compared to bees, indicating a wide range of pollinators are under threat in urban landscapes.

Joan Casanelles‐Abella, Simone Fontana, Bertrand Fournier, David Frey, Marco Moretti · Ecological Applications · Switzerland (Zurich)

This study in 23 urban gardens in Zurich, Switzerland, examined feeding niche partitioning between wild bees and honeybees. Researchers found that feeding niche partitioning increased with wild bee species richness and in sites with lower landscape-scale resource availability, which also had lower honeybee abundances. However, beekeeping intensity at local and landscape scales did not directly influence community feeding niche partitioning or wild bee species richness, suggesting direct competition for resources was not a main driver for the wild bee community.

Kit Prendergast, Amelie M. Vanderstock, Heather Neilly, Catherine E. Ross, Vanessa Pirotta, Patrick Tegart · Austral Ecology · Australia

A reflection on a citizen science project in which five early-career and PhD female researchers guided school-age children across five schools to build artificial flowers, install them on school ovals, and record over repeated 10-minute observations how flower colour (yellow vs. blue) and configuration (isolated, clumped adjacent, clumped mixed-colour, clumped single-colour) affected the number and taxa of visiting insects. The project achieved a low-cost, engaging format and exposure to female STEM role models, but the authors report constraints including having to run it in a season made suboptimal by fixed school curricula, confounding of results caused by the children's own observations, and an inability to verify the collected data.

Kit Prendergast · Pacific Conservation Biology · Australia

The African carder bee, Pseudoanthidium (Immanthidium) repetitum, first recorded in Queensland in 2000, has now been found in Western Australia, marking a significant distribution expansion. Three confirmed and one unconfirmed localities were identified in the Mandurah region, with abundant female specimens observed in one garden. The presence of this introduced species necessitates vigilance due to known negative impacts on native fauna and flora.

박진 · 한국양봉학회 학술대회 자료집 · Global

This report examines the global rise of urban beekeeping, noting its diverse approaches across countries like the UK, Japan, and Denmark. While South Korea has seen an increase in urban beekeeping since 2012, with government support initiated in 2016, the sector faces significant challenges. Urban beekeeping is still largely viewed as a derivative of conventional beekeeping, and a lack of ordinances or legal frameworks hinders its widespread adoption and recognition of its environmental, social, and economic value.

J. Scott MacIvor, Laurence Packer · PLoS ONE · Global

This study modeled the occupancy probability of six solitary bee species using nest boxes set along an urbanization gradient over three consecutive years. Native M. pugnata showed decreased occupancy with increasing building footprint, and a similar but not significant pattern was found for native O. pumila. Conversely, introduced M. rotundata and M. centuncularis, along with native M. campanulae, exhibited increased occupancy with rising urbanization.

Amanda E. Nelson, Andrew A. Forbes · PLoS ONE · Global

This study sampled two plant-herbivore-parasitoid systems across 250 sites in a 360 km2 urban/agricultural landscape to investigate the impact of human development on trophic interactions. It found that herbivorous insect densities were decoupled from host tree densities in urban landcover types at several spatial scales. Furthermore, a parasitoid species was absent from all urban/suburban landcover in one system, even where its herbivore host was common, indicating that human land use patterns limit specialist insect distributions due to dispersal constraints.

Karin Ahrné, Jan Bengtsson, Thomas Elmqvist · PLoS ONE · Sweden (Stockholm)

This study investigated bumble bees in allotment gardens along an urbanization gradient from inner Stockholm to rural areas. Findings showed that bumble bee diversity decreased with increasing urbanization, from approximately eight species in rural areas to five to six species in urban allotment gardens. Higher variability in the abundance of certain species in the most urban areas suggested a potentially weaker reliability of the pollination ecosystem service in areas strongly influenced by human activity.