The impacts of urban and suburban landscapes on native bee conservation and crop pollination

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Flower-visiting insects, such as wild bees, bumblebees and the honeybee, provide an essential service to human populations, pollination. This service is vital to agriculture as more than one third of the global food supply requires the visit of pollinators. Populations of wild bees have been reported to decline across Europe and North America. Habitat loss is likely to be one of several factors to contribute to these declines. Few studies have examined the effects of urban and suburban developments on native bee communities and no studies have explored the movement of wild bees at the interface of urban/suburban and rural areas. The overall objective of this proposal is to investigate the impacts of urban and suburban landscapes on wild bee conservation and crop pollination. The specific objectives of this research program are to 1) determine whether wild bee diversity and abundance change across a gradient of development (from urban to natural lands); 2) identify the plant species that support wild bees; 3) determine the effect of urban landscape components, such as ornamentals, turf grass, and non-plant, on the abundance and biodiversity of wild bees in adjacent agricultural fields; and 4) determine whether floral patches located in sub/urban-rural interfaces enhance the movement of wild bees into crops. The proposed research is novel and will have important implications for urban landscape management, conservation planning, and land-use policies.