The flowers and the bees - Solutions and tools for integrated sustainable planning to safeguard biodiversity in urban landscapes

Informations

Funding country

Norway

Acronym

-

URL

-

Start date

1/1/2018

End date

12/31/2022

Budget

1,034,182 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

BEE DIVERSE will investigate the effects of urbanization on the distribution, biodiversity and interaction of plants and pollinators. In the project, we focus on flowering meadows because they are important habitats for pollinators and plants and have particularly high biodiversity. Flower meadows are, however, very rare and we have therefore investigated whether there are other, more widespread, habitats that are suitable for the species associated with these meadows. We have found that roadsides are particularly rich in species and have many plant species that are associated with flower meadows. Roadsides are considerably more common in urban cultural landscapes than flower meadows and can therefore serve as important alternative habitats for plants associated with flower meadows. We have mapped pollinators and flower resources in flowering meadows and nearby roadsides in areas that are very urbanized to little urbanized. The results show that there are different species of pollinators and flowering plants in the city compared to less urbanized rural areas. However, both in the city and in rural areas, there are roadsides and flowering meadows that serve as good habitats for the pollinators. This means that if roadsides and flowering meadows are managed properly, they can help safeguard the biodiversity of pollinators both in areas that are heavily urbanized and the rural landscape around the cities. To investigate the interaction between plant species and pollinators in roadsides and flowering meadows, we have also investigated the number of flowers throughout the summer, which plant species the pollinators visit and collected pollen from the insects. We found that 29 species of pollinators visited plants from 38 different genera and families in the landscape. Although the total richness of plants was equal between flower meadows and roadsides, there were twice as many pollinators in the flowering meadows compared to the roadsides and also twice as many interactions between plants and pollinators. It was especially parasitic and solitary bees that preferred meadows over roadsides. The data will now be used to investigate whether the interaction between plants and insects varies with the degree of urbanization, habitat, functional features of the species or access to flower species. We have started a field experiment where we will investigate how to establish new areas with a high diversity of plants in the best possible way. The experiment will run one more year before we have results. We also investigate the extent to which pollinators and the biodiversity are considered in the planning and execution of urban development. We study in more detail the political treatment of the development area Øvre Rotvoll which is described by the developer as a very pollinator friendly residential area, the social processes around the species-rich hay meadow Grønlia, which is in the middle of the urban development in Trondheim and an urbane cooperative farm located in the center of Trondheim. Website in Norwegian and English has been updated describing the project, partners and activities. https://www.nibio.no/prosjekter/bee-diverse