An expert-assisted citizen science program involving agricultural high schools provides national patterns on bee species assemblages

Abstract

dataset using data freely available at a national scale on agriculture intensity and landscape composition. We found that species richness increased with increasing proportion of herbaceous semi-natural elements; species dominance decreased with increasing crop diversity; the proportion of above ground nesting species and specimens increased as the intensity of agricultural practices decreased. Comparing the results obtained with identification to species level and those obtained with higher taxa or parataxonomic approaches, we found that the loss of taxonomic resolution resulted in the non-significance of some results on the effects of environmental variables on bee assemblage-level attributes. Our study suggests that identification to species level is of great importance to detect the effects of global change on bees and that an expert-assisted citizen science paradigm could provide relevant results to guide conservation measures at a national scale.

Promoting Data Collection in Pollinator Citizen Science Projects

“…Many citizen science projects have an overarching goal of conserving wild and managed bee pollinators (Ullman et al 2010;Potter and LeBuhn 2015;Bloom and Crowder 2016;LeBuhn et al 2016;Le Féon et al 2016;van der Wal et al 2016 Domroese andJohnson 2017;Pocock et al 2018). However, the factors that affect data collection in pollinator citizen science projects have rarely been studied (but see van der Wal et al 2016;Domroese and Johnson 2017;Klienke et al 2018), hindering the development of projects that could promote global pollinator populations.…”

“…Because populations of wild and managed bees are globally threatened , monitoring is critical to conserving pollinator populations (Ullman et al 2010;LeBuhn et al 2016;Roy et al 2016;Wilson et al 2017;Pocock et al 2018). Engaging volunteers in monitoring may help to provide researchers with essential data on the factors mediating pollinator population declines (Kaartinen, Hardwick, and Roslin 2013;Le Féon et al 2016;Pocock et al 2018). However, the factors that promote data collection in pollinator citizen science projects are largely unknown (but see van der Wal et al 2016;Domroese and Johnson 2017;Klienke et al 2018), contributing to uncertainty in the methods that may be most useful for wild and managed bee pollinator conservation worldwide.…”

Simplified and still meaningful: assessing butterfly habitat quality in grasslands with data collected by pupils

“…Furthermore, the desirable inclusion of a broad array of citizens in the collection of biodiversity data (Lukyanenko et al 2016) may make it necessary to use higher level classification instead of species identification, and the resulting loss of information must be evaluated regarding its remaining informative value for the desired purpose (cf. Le Féon et al 2016). To compare butterfly diversity of different sites (or for analysing trends in time) one needs applicable and meaningful measures (MacDonald et al 2017).…”

Range expansion of the Asian native giant resin bee Megachile sculpturalis (Hymenoptera, Apoidea, Megachilidae) in France

“…Fourthly, we informed about our study the teachers from agricultural high schools involved in standardized surveys of bees in the framework of a research program presented in Le Féon et al. () as well as environmental managers from the “Réserves Naturelles de France” network (natural protected areas). By doing so, we informed people located in all parts of France, which could help us to collect data.…”