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Anthropogenic landscapes support fewer rare bee species

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Abstract

Context

The response of rare species to human land use is poorly known because rarity is difficult to study; however, it is also important because rare species compose most of biodiversity, and are disproportionately vulnerable. Regional bee pollinator faunas have not been assessed for rarity outside of Europe. Therefore, we do not know to what extent anthropogenic landscapes support rare North American bee biodiversity.

Objectives

We ask how richness and abundance of bee species respond to land use, within quartiles of species defined by their numerical, phenological, and geographical rarity.

Methods

We conducted a field study to sample bee communities in forested, agricultural, and urban landscapes replicated across a large spatial extent of the northeastern United States. We used large independent data sets to classify observed bee species according to three forms of rarity: their numerical rarity (low regional frequency in a museum-based data set), phenological rarity (short flight season length) and geographical rarity (small range size).

Results

For all three forms of rarity, we found half as many rare bee species in agricultural landscapes compared to forest. We found half as many phenologically rare species in urban landscapes. Bees that had both shorter flight seasons and smaller range sizes were between one-third and one-half as rich in both types of anthropogenic landscapes, regardless of regional frequency.

Conclusions

Although a minority of rare bee species were found in anthropogenic landscapes, our overall conclusion is that the native vegetation of our region, forest, is critical for supporting rare bee biodiversity.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Sam Droege at the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Beltsville, Maryland for identifying 1338 bee specimens of Nomada, and for sharing his data (3500 of the 42,552 specimen records used for defining bee species’ phenology). We also thank members of the Winfree lab for invaluable comments and support throughout this study’s planning, analysis and writing, and helpful comments from the associate editor and two anonymous peer reviewers that improved the final manuscript. This work was supported by a federal Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) fellowship awarded to TH through the Rutgers University Ecology & Evolution Graduate Program.

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  1. Department of Ecology, Evolution, & Natural Resources, Rutgers University, 14 College Farm Rd, New Brunswick, NJ, 08901, USA

    Tina Harrison & Rachael Winfree

  2. Department of Entomology, University of Manitoba, 12 Dafoe Rd, Winnipeg, MB, R3T 2N2, Canada

    Jason Gibbs

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  1. Tina Harrison
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Correspondence to Tina Harrison.

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Harrison, T., Gibbs, J. & Winfree, R. Anthropogenic landscapes support fewer rare bee species. Landscape Ecol 34, 967–978 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-017-0592-x

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