Use of human-made nesting structures by wild bees in an urban environment - INRAE - Institut national de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue Journal of Insect Conservation Année : 2016

Use of human-made nesting structures by wild bees in an urban environment

Résumé

Most bees display an array of strategies for building their nests, and the availability of nesting resources plays a significant role in organizing bee communities. Although urbanization can cause local species extinction, many bee species persist in urbanized areas. We studied the response of a bee community to winter-installed humanmade nesting structures (bee hotels and soil squares, i.e. 0.5 m deep holes filled with soil) in urbanized sites. We investigated the colonization pattern of these structures over two consecutive years to evaluate the effect of age and the type of substrates (e.g. logs, stems) provided on colonization. Overall, we collected 54 species. In the hotels, two gregarious species, Osmia bicornis L. and O. cornuta Latr. dominated the community (over 87 % of the data). Over 2 years, the age of the soil squares did not affect their level of colonization and the same was true for the hotels with respect to O. bicornis and ‘other species’. However, O. cornuta occurred less often and raised fewer descendants in 1-year old hotels than in new ones. Bee nesting was not affected by the soil texture and, among above-ground nesting bees, only O. bicornis showed a preference for some substrates, namely Acer sp. and Catalpa sp. In a context of increasing urbanization and declining bee populations, much attention has focused upon improving the floral resources available for bees, while little effort has been paid to nesting resources. Our results indicate that, in addition to floral availability, nesting resources should be taken into account in the development of urban green areas to promote a diverse bee community.
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
2016_Fortel_Journal of Insect Conservation_1 (1.43 Mo) Télécharger le fichier
Origine : Fichiers éditeurs autorisés sur une archive ouverte

Dates et versions

hal-02637308 , version 1 (27-05-2020)

Licence

Paternité

Identifiants

Citer

Laura Fortel, Mickaël Henry, Laurent Guilbaud, Hugues Mouret, Bernard Vaissière. Use of human-made nesting structures by wild bees in an urban environment. Journal of Insect Conservation, 2016, 20 (2), pp.239-253. ⟨10.1007/s10841-016-9857-y⟩. ⟨hal-02637308⟩
83 Consultations
81 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More