Urban versus rural did not explain these park-bee metrics as well as flowers inside the park
WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS
Researchers recorded 5,763 wild bees representing 188 species across 22 urban and rural parks. Bee-forage-plant cover was the strongest predictor of abundance and species richness and was associated with lower Jaccard dissimilarity and turnover. Landscape type, floral richness, bare ground, park age and analyzed landscape-scale gradients showed no significant effects on the community metrics; functional dispersion and trait–environment associations also showed no significant responses.
WHY IT MATTERS / OUR READ
‘Urban’ is not automatically the ecological treatment. At the scale of managed parks, local resource condition can explain more of the observed pollinator response than a coarse urban–rural label. That argues for measuring the habitat a species actually experiences rather than using settlement category as a proxy for it.
CAVEATS / UNCERTAINTY
This is an observational study of 22 parks in one Central European setting. Non-significant landscape effects are not proof that surrounding landscape is irrelevant in other systems or at other scales, and forage cover may covary with unmeasured management or habitat factors.
SOURCE
Apidologie
View original evidence ↗
Across 22 Central European parks, forage-plant cover predicted wild-bee abundance and richness; landscape type and several broader gradients were not significant predictors of the analyzed metrics.
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