NutriB2: Nutrition as critical link between Biodiversity and Bee health

获得不同种类的食物资源确保适当的营养，因此对动物健康和健身至关重要。蜜蜂几乎所有的营养都从花中获得。因此，它们的种群动态在很大程度上取决于开花植物的可用性、组成和多样性。令人担忧的是，在当代景观中，许多蜜蜂种群正在减少，这可能是由于花卉资源多样性、丰富性的丧失和花卉资源营养质量的下降。然而，花卉多样性与组成、花卉资源的营养成分与蜜蜂健康之间的实际联系仍不清楚，特别是野生蜜蜂，它们对环境变化的适应能力甚至不如蜜蜂。在NutriB2中，我们将结合我们在分类学、营养和化学生态学、生理学、行为学、流行病学、生物统计学和建模方面的专业知识，协同努力，阐明植物生物多样性、营养和蜜蜂健康之间的联系。我们将进一步揭示关键营养物质和/或比例，从而揭示关键植物物种或植物物种的组成，以满足大部分蜜蜂物种的营养需求并支持其健康。这一知识对于我们理解花卉的组成和多样性如何通过营养调节的健康效应来构建蜜蜂群落至关重要。我们的成果将与不同的利益相关者(即种子公司、养蜂和农民组织、区域到国际保护组织、积极促进蜜蜂多样性计划的学校、企业代表和政策制定者)分享和处理，以确定a)恢复和/或维护具有营养价值的植物物种的半自然栖息地的可行方法，以及b)设计和实施营养均衡的花卉种子混合物。营养适宜和多样化的花卉群落不仅有利于不同的蜜蜂物种，而且还有利于依赖植物的其他动物以及更高的营养水平。因此，NutriB2将不仅阐明花卉生物多样性与蜜蜂健康之间已知的正相关的潜在机制，而且使我们能够设计更好的策略来保护或恢复蜜蜂的花卉多样性，从而减缓野生蜜蜂和生物多样性的持续下降。

Access to a diverse spectrum of food resources ensures appropriate nutrition and is thus crucial for animal health and fitness. Bees obtain nearly all nutrients from flowers. Their population dynamics are therefore largely determined by the availability, composition and diversity of flowering plants. Alarmingly, many bee populations are in decline in contemporary landscapes, likely due to the loss of floral resource diversity, abundance and a decrease in the nutritional quality of floral resources. However, the actual link between floral diversity and composition, the nutritional composition of floral resources and bee health is still unclear, particularly in wild bees, which are even less resilient to environmental changes than honeybees. In NutriB2, we will combine our expertise in taxonomy, nutritional & chemical ecology, physiology, behavior, epidemiology, biostatistics and modeling to, in a synergistic effort, clarify the link between floral biodiversity, nutrition and bee health. We will further reveal critical nutrients and/or ratios and thus key plant species or compositions of plant species that cover the nutritional needs and support health of a large fraction of bee species. This knowledge is crucial for our understanding of how floral composition and diversity structure bee communities through nutritionally mediated health effects. It is also essential for designing and/or identifying and restoring habitats that support wild bee populations.Our results will be shared and processed with different stakeholders (i.e. seed companies, beekeeping and farmers’ organizations, regional to international conservation groups, schools with programs to actively promote bee diversity, business representatives and policy makers) to determine feasible ways of a) restoring and/or maintaining semi-natural habitats with nutritionally highly valuable plant species and b) designing and implementing nutritionally balanced floral seed mixes. Nutritionally appropriate and diverse floral communities will not only benefit diverse bee species, but also others animals depending on plants as well as higher trophic levels. NutriB2 will therefore not only shed light on the mechanisms underlying the known positive correlation between floral biodiversity and bee health, but also enable us to design better strategies for conserving or restoring floral diversity for bees and thus mitigate the ongoing wild bee and biodiversity decline.