Abstract
Bee and insect mortality has recently moved to the forefront of current nature conservation debates and experiences intensive media coverage worldwide. In order to understand the complexity, it is necessary to raise awareness of the diversity of bees. This study investigated whether students are aware of the species diversity of bees. We are guided by the concept of ‘plant blindness’ and show that it cannot be assumed that people are only ’plant-blind’. Therefore, we introduce the concept of Species Awareness Disparity (SAD) in bees to describe a phenomenon which can be defined as the failure to appreciate the significance of wild bee species and the inability to distinguish between individual species of the Apidae family. A total of 421 German students in grades 5–7 participated. The majority of students did not associate a diversity of species with the term ‘wild bee’ but rather consider the honeybee as the bee. Only 2.7% (N = 421) of the students were able to correctly identify pictures of wild bees and the honeybee. This highlights the importance of educating students about the identity and nature of bees in their environment so that they become aware of their meaning from both a personal and an ecological perspective.
Highlights
There is broad scientific evidence of an ongoing decline of many insect species in Europe, North America, and other regions of world [1]
Following Parsley’s arguments [32] as well as Silveira et al [43], we introduce the concept of ‘Species Awareness Disparity’ (SAD) for bees in order to describe a phenomenon which can be defined as the failure to appreciate the significance of wild bee species and the inability to distinguish between individual species of the Apidae family
Our study was conducted within an educational project which focuses on bumblebees as ambassador species to address insect decline in high school biology classes
Summary
There is broad scientific evidence of an ongoing decline of many insect species in Europe, North America, and other regions of world [1]. As reviewed by Sánchez-Bayo and Wyckhuys, numerous studies exclusively list anthropogenic factors as drivers of insect decline [1,3]. Both climate change and losses of intact habitats due to urbanization and intensive agriculture are considered to contribute to shifts and losses of ecosystem functions. As a consequence, this worldwide decline in the number of insect species has elicited considerable public attention [4,5]. The absolute number of insects is radically declining considering their biomass per area [5]
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