Importance of Habitat Area and Landscape Context for Species Richness of Bees and Wasps in Fragmented Orchard Meadows

By I. Steffan‐Dewenter. 2003

378 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract: I investigated how habitat area, habitat connectivity, and landscape context affect the species richness and abundance of trap‐nesting bees, wasps, and their natural enemies. The research was done on 45 orchard meadows ranging in size from 0.08 to 5.8 ha and differing in habitat connectivity and the surrounding landscape matrix. Effects of the surrounding landscape matrix were restricted to circles with a radius of 250 m. Only the species richness of natural enemies increased with landscape diversity in the surrounding matrix. Population densities of bees increased with habitat connectivity. Total species richness and species richness of bees, eumenid wasps, and natural enemies significantly increased with habitat area. Significant species‐area relationships existed for insect groups but not for plants, thereby confirming the hypothesis that higher trophic levels are more affected by habitat fragmentation than lower trophic levels. The slope of species‐area relationships was steeper for mutualistic bees than for predatory wasps and natural enemies. In contrast to expectations, the rate of parasitism did not depend on habitat area but only on the local and regional abundance of hosts. My results suggest that the area and connectivity of habitat fragments is most important for the conservation of habitat specialists, whereas generalists may profit from a diverse surrounding landscape matrix.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e3b3cbc36a4d4796e7f68d1272fcb3ecf956647d

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Citations in the corpus

Do linear landscape elements in farmland act as biological corridors for pollen dispersal? (2010, background): “…to reduce the abundance and species richness of main pollinators, such as wild solitary bees, bumblebees, butterflies and Syrphid flies, but can also alter their behaviour (Steffan-Dewenter & Tscharntke 1999; Steffan-Dewenter 2003;Goulson, Lye&Darvill 2008; Steffan-Dewenter &West- phal 2008).”
Abundance and diversity of wild bees along gradients of heavy metal pollution (2012, background): “One of the major factors causing declines of bee diversity and abundance is habitat loss and fragmentation driven mostly by intensification of agriculture (Banaszak 1995; Steffan-Dewenter 2003; Le Féon et al. 2010).”
The influence of thematic resolution on metric selection for biodiversity monitoring in agricultural landscapes (2007, background): “Other authors have shown the important role of landscape pattern and context for bee species (e.g. Steffan-Dewenter 2003).”
A landscape perspective on conservation of semi-natural grasslands (2008, neutral): “, 2001) and pollinators (Steffan-Dewenter, 2003).”
Landscape composition and configuration differently affect trap-nesting bees, wasps and their antagonists (2014, background): “Antagonists also have more complex requirements because they have to synchronise their activities in space and time with host abundance (Durrer and Schmid-Hempel, 1995; Steffan-Dewenter, 2003).”
Habitat models and habitat connectivity analysis for butterflies and burnet moths - The example of Zygaena carniolica and Coenonympha arcania (2005, background): “…food plants of Z. carniolica. b Nectar plants of Z. carniolica. c Data available area-wide. landscape context, as a species presence might also be influenced by the surrounding landscape structure and heterogeneity (Fahrig and Johnson, 1998; Steffan-Dewenter, 2003; Summerville and Crist, 2004).”
Pollination and other ecosystem services produced by mobile organisms: a conceptual framework for the effects of land-use change. (2007, neutral): “The response of bee individuals, populations and communities to land-use change is largely driven by the spatial and temporal distribution of ﬂoral, nesting and over-wintering”
Confounding factors in the detection of species responses to habitat fragmentation (2005, background): “Similarly, Tscharntke and Kruess (1999) found that SA curves for parasitoid species were steeper than for herbivores, although Steffan-Dewenter (2003) failed to find any difference between bees, wasps and their natural predators and parasitoids.”
Landscape structure influences pollinator movements and directly affects plant reproductive success (2012, background): “Linkages within pollination webs can be particularly susceptible to reductions in habitat patch size and increased distances between habitat fragments (Rathcke and Jules 1993, Kearns et al. 1998, Krauss et al. 2003, Steffan-Dewenter 2003, SteffanDewenter et al. 2006, Pauw 2007).”
Sustainable pest regulation in agricultural landscapes: a review on landscape composition, biodiversity and natural pest control (2006, background): “…than simplified, coarse-grained landscapes composed of mainly arable fields (Banaszak 1992; Tscharntke et al. 1998; Weibull et al. 2000; Söderström et al. 2001; Steffan-Dewenter 2002, 2003; Kruess 2003; Weibull & Östman 2003; Weibull et al. 2003; Purtauf et al. 2005a,b; Schmidt et al. 2005).”
The restoration of ecological interactions: plant-pollinator networks on ancient and restored heathlands (2007, background): “…that landscape setting has a marked influence on how great a subset of the regional species pool can be found locally (e.g. Tscharntke et al. 2002; Steffan-Dewenter 2003; Steffan-Dewenter & Kuhn 2003), but some of the factors causing pollinator assemblies to vary dramatically between years may…”
Larger patches of diverse floral resources increase insect pollinator density, diversity, and their pollination of native wildflowers (2014, background): “Larger habitat patches contain ore abundant and diverse resources and can therefore sup- ort more diverse bee communities as shown for orchard eadows (Steffan-Dewenter 2003) and restored quarry habi- ats (Steffan-Dewenter, Klein, Gaebele, Alfert, & Tscharntke 006).”
Pollinator dispersal in an agricultural matrix: opposing responses of wild bees and hoverflies to landscape structure and distance from main habitat (2009, background): “Thus, linear habitats like field margins cannot sustain bee populations equal in size to those in large habitats ( Steffan-Dewenter 2003 ).”