Speaker
Description
Landscape alteration, agricultural intensification and climate change are considered the most important global change factors driving wild bee decline. However, little is known about whether these drivers have led to changes in the life-history traits of bees. Body size is one of the most fundamental life-history traits, with pervasive effects on individual fitness, population dynamics and the structure of ecological networks. Therefore, variability in bee body size across environmental gradients deserves more attention.
To investigate how bee body size changes over environmental gradients of anthropogenic disturbance, we measured the body size of 10 wild bee species collected from 6 landscapes that vary in agriculture intensity and landscape heterogeneity in Saxony‐Anhalt, Germany. Our results revealed that i) there is a shift in bee body size between sites with different levels of human impact, and ii) the direction of change is not consistent across species. We discuss the eco-evolutionary implications of the effect of agricultural intensification on bee body size and how different bee species might vary in their vulnerability to environmental change.
| Status Group | Doctoral Researcher |
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