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Dancing bees communicate a foraging preference for rural lands in high-level agri-environment schemes

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 20:18 authored by Margaret J Couvillon, Roger Schürch, Francis Ratnieks
Since 1994, more than €41 billion has been spent in the European Union on agri-environment schemes (AESs), which aim to mitigate the effects of anthropomorphic landscape changes via financial incentives for land managers to encourage environmentally friendly practices [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Surprisingly, given the substantial price tag and mandatory EU member participation [2], there is either a lack of [1] or mixed [1, 2, 7] evidence-based support for the schemes. One novel source of data to evaluate AESs may be provided by an organism that itself may benefit from them. Honeybees (Apis mellifera), important pollinators for crops and wildflowers [8, 9], are declining in parts of the world from many factors, including loss of available forage from agricultural intensification [10, 11, 12, 13]. We analyzed landscape-level honeybee foraging ecology patterns over two years by decoding 5,484 waggle dances from bees located in the center of a mixed, urban-rural 94 km2 area, including lands under government-funded AESs. The waggle dance, a unique behavior performed by successful foragers, communicates to nestmates the most profitable foraging locations [14, 15, 16]. After correcting for distance, dances demonstrate that honeybees possess a significant preference for rural land managed under UK Higher Level AESs and a significant preference against rural land under UK Organic Entry Level AESs. Additionally, the two most visited areas contained a National and Local Nature Reserve, respectively. Our study demonstrates that honeybees, with their great foraging range and sensitive response to forage quality, can be used as bioindicators to monitor large areas and provide information relevant to better environmental management.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Current Biology

ISSN

0960-9822

Publisher

Elsevier

Issue

11

Volume

24

Page range

1212-1215

Department affiliated with

  • Evolution, Behaviour and Environment Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2015-03-12

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2021-03-09

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