Combined influences of floral resources, soil environment, and land use on plant-bee interactions at the landscape scale

Most wild and cultivated plant species depend on insects to ensure their pollination. With the intensification of agricultural practices via land use change and the use of pesticides in crops against insects, a large proportion of pollinators species have seen their population decrease for a few decades. Thus, it is important to understand the underlying mechanisms of pollinators decline for conservation purposes. In landscape ecology, the way in which the influence of a landscape on the distribution of a species is conceived is too often based on our perception of the landscape structure and not on features or characteristics that would directly reflect the perception that studied species can have of the quality of its environment. The first part of our project aims to apprehend pollinator population dynamics by using pollinator health of bumblebees. We link pollinator health with landscape composition, soil structure and soil content, pollution of trace elements and neonicotinoids molecules in 30 crop sites in Wallonia. Our project aims secondly to implement a regional predictor model of pollinator health at the scale of Wallonia, by using satellite remote sensing data and databases information. The model will be calibrated and tested on field data carried out during the first part of the project. This model has the intent to greatly contribute to future conservation and agricultural landscape decision in Wallonia.

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Buron, M., Defourny, P., Jeannerod, L., Jacquemart, A.-L., Radoux, J., & Agnan, Y. (2023). Combined influences of floral resources, soil environment, and land use on plant-bee interactions at the landscape scale. ELI-Day, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/240518