Projects about bumblebees

Kontakt: Liam Kendall (CEC), liam.kendall@cec.lu.se, +46702606943

 

Bumblebees living on island time

Bumblebees are an incredibly important group of pollinating insects, who face an uncertain future given the concurrent threats of anthropogenic land use change, habitat fragmentation and climate change. Systematic monitoring throughout Sweden over the last 15 years has demonstrated that bumblebee communities are undergoing significant temporal change. Yet, island ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to climate change and how temporal changes differ between island and mainland sites remains to be investigated. This project would make use of existing bumblebee monitoring data to analyse temporal trends in bumblebee diversity on islands (Gotland, Öland) relative to comparable mainland locations, to identify vulnerable species (and/or climate indicator species) and contribute to a better understanding of the processes driving changes in biodiversity in Sweden.

 

Co-adaptation between bumblebee traits and foraging strategies

The scale at which bees influence ecosystem processes such as pollination is linked to their foraging range, or the distance from their nest during foraging bouts. Previous studies have demonstrated that foraging ranges are linked to both species body size and degree of sociality. However, other functional traits (e.g., colony size, nesting preferences, emergence date) may play a vital role in structuring variation in bee foraging ranges. Using pre-compiled measurements of foraging range as well as functional traits in bumblebees, this project will assess co-adaptation between functional traits and foraging ranges, in order to improve our understanding of bumblebee foraging strategies, and contribute to process-based models of pollination service provisioning.

Uppdaterat: Nina Reistad  |  2022-07-06