Documenting pollinators, floral hosts, and plant–pollinator interactions in U.S. Pacific Northwest agroecosystems

Abstract

The abundance and diversity of pollinator populations are in global decline. Managed pollinator species, like honey bees, and wild species are key ecosystem service providers in both natural and managed agroecosystems. However, relatively few studies have exhaustively characterized pollinator populations in diverse agroecosystems over multiple years, while also thoroughly documenting plant–pollinator interactions. Yet, such studies are needed to fulfill the national pollinator protection plans that have been released by the United States and other nations. Our research is among the first studies to respond to these directives by systematically documenting bee and plant biodiversity, bee–plant interactions, and bee‐mediated pollen movement in farming systems of the Pacific Northwest, USA. Our data provides insight into the processes mediating pollinator and plant community assembly, persistence, and resilience across landscapes with variable crop and landscape diversity and agroecosystem management practices. These data will also contribute to the development of a United States pollinator database, supporting the United States' plan to promote pollinators. With few publicly available data sets that systematically take account of agroecosystem practices, plant populations, and pollinators, our research will provide future users the means to conduct synesthetic studies of pollinators and ecosystem function in a period of rapid and global pollinator declines. There are no copyright or proprietary restrictions for research or teaching purposes. Usage of the data set must be cited.

Identifying drivers of sewage-associated pollutants in pollinators across urban landscapes

“…Study System. Our study of PPCPs in bees was nested within a study of bee ecology on 36 small (< 25 ha), diversified farms and community gardens (e.g., farms and gardens with more than five unique flowering crops in simultaneous production) in western Washington (USA) (Bloom et al 2021). For the present study, bees were collected from a subset of 10 urban gardens that were selected along an urbanization gradient (Fig.…”

“…1). Each garden was at least 1 km apart for spatial independence (Bloom et al 2021;Desaegher et al 2022).…”

“…Bees were collected at each site using three blue vane traps (SpringStar LLC, Woodinville, WA, USA) and 15 bee bowls placed along a 50 m transect. All collected bees were preserved, pinned, and then identified to species (Bloom et al 2021). Of the 6,539 specimens collected, we selected 101 specimens with approximately balanced specimens from each of the three bee species (B. vosnesenskii, A. texanus, and A. mellifera); these taxa reflect variation in social behavior (social vs. solitary taxa) and nesting strategies (i.e., cavity vs. ground-nesting taxa).…”

“…Following peak quantification, we noticed that concentrations tended to be bimodal, where PPCPs were either detected in higher concentrations or not detected (Figure 2). We assumed that the bimodality of these detections was likely a product of low-to-intermediate PPCP concentrations degrading since the time of specimen collection or diffusing from bee tissues as samples were originally collected in an ethanol solution before pinning (Bloom et al, 2021). In order to provide conservative estimates of bee PPCP presence, we reduced concentrations into categorical presence/absence informatics, such that subsequent models and model interpretations should be conservative.…”

“…Bees were collected at each site using three blue vane traps (SpringStar LLC, Woodinville, WA, USA) and 15 bee bowls placed along a 50 m transect. All collected bees were preserved, pinned, and then identified to species (Bloom et al 2021) from each of the three bee species (B. vosnesenskii, A. texanus, and A. mellifera); these taxa reflect variation in social behavior (social vs. solitary taxa) and nesting strategies (i.e., cavity vs. ground-nesting taxa). Because bee species were collected across three years (2014,2015,2016) and three time points (spring, summer, and fall), we selected pinned specimens for this analysis to have a balanced number of individuals across the sampling period.…”