Curtin review finds indigenous bees under menace from increasing urbanization

Household gardens are a lousy substitute for indigenous bushland and escalating urbanisation is a growing danger when it will come to bees, Curtin University study has identified.&#13

Published in ‘Urban Ecosystems’, the research looked at bee visits to flowers, which sort pollination networks throughout distinctive indigenous bushland and home backyard garden habitats. &#13

Lead writer, Forrest Basis Scholar Miss Kit Prendergast, from Curtin’s Faculty of Molecular and Lifetime Sciences explained the conclusions spotlight the need to have to reduce destruction of remaining bushland and protect indigenous vegetation, in buy to guard sustainable bee communities and their pollination products and services. &#13

“Our research involved paying out hundreds of hrs at 14 web pages on the Swan Coastal Plain at Perth, Western Australia, recording which bees visited which flowers in the two forms of habitats – gardens and indigenous bushland,” Overlook Prendergast reported.&#13

“From these bee-plant interactions I was capable to map pollination networks, which could be analysed to establish how ‘healthy’ each individual habitat was for bees and the pollination solutions it delivered, as nicely as how considerably probable opposition there was concerning unique bee groups, these types of as in between introduced European honeybees and indigenous bee teams.&#13

“We identified residential gardens were being structurally diverse to individuals in bushland remnants, and the rising decline of these indigenous places for residential improvement could disrupt vital bee-plant interactions.”&#13

Miss Prendergast reported that although bushland remnants were additional favourable environments for flourishing pollination networks of bees and flowers, the possibility of bee populations totally disappearing from an region was bigger than in residential gardens.&#13

“This implies that, if disrupted for city advancement, bee and plant populations in indigenous bushland remnants would be even extra susceptible to extinctions,” Pass up Prendergast said.&#13

“The research displays the importance of bushland preservation to the survival and overall health of bee populations and the broader ecosystems.&#13

“This has implications for the conservation of wild bee populations in this biodiversity hotspot, and implies removing of remnant indigenous vegetation for residential enhancement could disrupt the stability and integrity of community ecosystems and guide to extinctions.” &#13

Co-authored by Professor Jeff Ollerton from the University of Northampton, the comprehensive paper, ‘Plant-pollinator networks in Australian city bushland remnants are not structurally equivalent to individuals in residential gardens’, can be identified on the internet.&#13

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