Biodiversity measures providing food and nesting habitat increase the number of bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) colonies in modelled agricultural landscapes

Abstract

Individual biodiversity measures in agricultural landscapes such as flower strips are reported to promote the diversity and abundance of pollinating insects. Those biodiversity measures can be important food sources increasing the amount and continuity of pollen and nectar supply besides sometimes also offering nesting and hibernation sites. Still little is known about combined effects of biodiversity measures at the landscape scale and their long-term impact on pollinator population development. We used the agent-based simulation model BumbleBEEHAVE to investigate, if biodiversity measures have a positive effect on bumblebee populations at landscape scale in terms of the number of colonies per hectare. For this purpose, we chose Bombus terrestris, the most common bumblebee species in Germany, as target species. We used three real landscapes located in different regions of Germany as landscape settings for the simulations. The landscapes had strongly different farming systems regarding crop diversity and rotations and, consequently, different spatial structure and areal proportions of land-use types and semi-natural habitats. Between 2017 and 2020, distinct combinations of biodiversity measures, such as flower strips, flowering headland and fallows, were established by farmers on different areal proportions of the three landscapes. The biodiversity measures differed in plant-seed mixtures and, thus, the pollen and nectar supply by plants. We simulated the development of bumblebee colonies in the landscapes with and without the implemented biodiversity measures over eight years (four years in a twice repetition). We found that the implementation of biodiversity measures had a significant positive effect on the number of colonies. Further analysis showed that the pollen and nectar supplied by biodiversity measures had positive effects in all three landscapes, while the effect of additional nesting habitat differed among landscapes. Mass-flowering crops had little to no significant effect on the number of bumblebee colonies, whereas semi-natural habitats had a markedly positive effect. Our study underlines that not only biodiversity measures are likely to affect the bumblebee population, but that the overall landscape composition, particularly proportion of semi-natural habitats, is also important. So, to achieve high effectiveness of biodiversity measures, landscape context may be taken into account.