TY  - JOUR
A1  - Reeg, Jette
A1  - Strigl, Lea
A1  - Jeltsch, Florian
T1  - Agricultural buffer zone thresholds to safeguard functional bee diversity
BT  - Insights from a community modeling approach
JF  - Ecology and Evolution
N2  - Wild bee species are important pollinators in agricultural landscapes. However, population decline was reported over the last decades and is still ongoing. While agricultural intensification is a major driver of the rapid loss of pollinating species, transition zones between arable fields and forest or grassland patches, i.e., agricultural buffer zones, are frequently mentioned as suitable mitigation measures to support wild bee populations and other pollinator species. Despite the reported general positive effect, it remains unclear which amount of buffer zones is needed to ensure a sustainable and permanent impact for enhancing bee diversity and abundance. To address this question at a pollinator community level, we implemented a process-based, spatially explicit simulation model of functional bee diversity dynamics in an agricultural landscape. More specifically, we introduced a variable amount of agricultural buffer zones (ABZs) at the transition of arable to grassland, or arable to forest patches to analyze the impact on bee functional diversity and functional richness. We focused our study on solitary bees in a typical agricultural area in the Northeast of Germany. Our results showed positive effects with at least 25% of virtually implemented agricultural buffer zones. However, higher amounts of ABZs of at least 75% should be considered to ensure a sufficient increase in Shannon diversity and decrease in quasi-extinction risks. These high amounts of ABZs represent effective conservation measures to safeguard the stability of pollination services provided by solitary bee species. As the model structure can be easily adapted to other mobile species in agricultural landscapes, our community approach offers the chance to compare the effectiveness of conservation measures also for other pollinator communities in future.
KW  - agricultural landscape
KW  - buffer zones
KW  - community model
KW  - functional traits
KW  - solitary bees
KW  - spatially explicit
Y1  - 2022
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.8748
SN  - 2045-7758
VL  - 12
SP  - 1
EP  - 17
PB  - Wiley Online Library
CY  - Hoboken, New Jersey, USA
ET  - 3
ER  -