Decline and conservation of bumble bees.

By Dave Goulson, G. C. Lye, Ben Darvill. Annual Review of Entomology, 2008

1,178 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Declines in bumble bee species in the past 60 years are well documented in Europe, where they are driven primarily by habitat loss and declines in floral abundance and diversity resulting from agricultural intensification. Impacts of habitat degradation and fragmentation are likely to be compounded by the social nature of bumble bees and their largely monogamous breeding system, which renders their effective population size low. Hence, populations are susceptible to stochastic extinction events and inbreeding. In North America, catastrophic declines of some bumble bee species since the 1990s are probably attributable to the accidental introduction of a nonnative parasite from Europe, a result of global trade in domesticated bumble bee colonies used for pollination of greenhouse crops. Given the importance of bumble bees as pollinators of crops and wildflowers, steps must be taken to prevent further declines. Suggested measures include tight regulation of commercial bumble bee use and targeted use of environmentally comparable schemes to enhance floristic diversity in agricultural landscapes.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Insect Science, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b2a61531da3876539c0f3d62d13d3ac5c640f175

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Citations in the corpus

A meta-analysis of bees' responses to anthropogenic disturbance. (2009, background): “Human disturbance, particularly the loss of natural and semi-natural habitats, is regarded as a primary cause of pollinator decline (Kearns et al. 1998, Aizen and Feinsinger 2003, Goulson et al. 2008).”
Relationships between wild bees, hoverflies and pollination success in apple orchards with different landscape contexts (2016, background): “, 2013), human disturbance (Goulson et al., 2008), agricultural intensification (Kearns et al.”
Pollination reservoirs for wild bee habitat enhancement in cropping systems: a review (2017, background): “In Europe, bumble bees are in decline (Goulson, Lye, and Darvill 2008; Rasmont et al. 2005; Williams 1982) and in North America pollinator communities are shifting (Bushmann and Drummond 2015; Kerr et al. 2015).”
The city as a refuge for insect pollinators (2017, background): “In the midst of a pollination crisis, where insect pollinator populations are experiencing significant declines (Jaffe et al. 2010; Pleasants & Oberhauser 2013; Goulson et al. 2015), studies of native bee richness and abundance indicate that diverse communities of wild bees persist in cities in many”
Bee declines driven by combined stress from parasites, pesticides, and lack of flowers (2015, background): “Herbicides are highly effective at minimizing weed problems in most cropping systems, enabling farmers to grow near-pure monocultures, but their use inevitably reduces the availability of flowers for pollinators and can contribute substantially to rendering farmland an inhospitable environment for b”
Factors affecting bee communities in forest openings and adjacent mature forest (2017, background): “…or degradation of pollinator habitats have been implicated as a major contributing factor to these declines (Aizen and Feinsinger, 2003; Goulson et al., 2008; Potts et al., 2010); however, not all disturbances are detrimental for bees since many species are associated with open,…”
Neonicotinoids in bees: a review on concentrations, side-effects and risk assessment (2012, background): “parallel decrease of plant species, or vice versa (Biesmeijer et al. 2006; National Research Council of the National Academies 2007; Goulson et al. 2008).”
Superorganism resilience: eusociality and susceptibility of ecosystem service providing insects to stressors (2015, background): “Consequently, major declines of wild insects providing such ecosystem services, in combination with elevated losses of managed honey bees, throughout the northern hemisphere are of widespread concern [3,5].”
The decline of moths in Great Britain: a review of possible causes (2013, background): “In Britain (and elsewhere in north-west Europe), moderate levels of climate warming may bring opportunities for thermally constrained species such as insects and there is strong evidence, for example, that some butterflies have already expanded their ranges and flight periods in response to climate ”
Economic and ecological implications of geographic bias in pollinator ecology in the light of pollinator declines (2014, background): “Such bias is also likely to characterise pollinator loss research because across much of the globe we have little or no data monitoring pollinator assemblages or population trends (Goulson et al. 2008, Winfree 2010).”
Significance of Apoidea as Main Pollinators. Ecological and Economic Impact and Implications for Human Nutrition (2020, background): “Meanwhile, despite sporadic cases of local extinction, the number of honey bee colonies worldwide has increased by about 45% in the past 50 years and particularly since 1961 [17,18].”
Where is the value in valuing pollination ecosystem services to agriculture (2015, background): “This might be the case amongmany crops where other limitations have been alleviated through intensive agriculture, at the expense of wild pollinator populations (Goulson et al., 2008; Le Féon et al., 2010; Potts et al., 2010).”