Distribution and abundance of bee forage flora across an agricultural landscape – railway embankments vs. road verges

Abstract

In this study, we evaluated if railway embankments and road verges create refuge habitats for bee flora across agricultural landscape. The survey was conducted in 2009-2012, in the Lublin Province, SE Poland. Data on the bee forage flora were obtained while making floristic charts along 60 transect plots × 300 m, with a total length of 18 000 m, for each type of linear structure. Forage bee flora was compared with respect to species richness, diversity, and evenness indices. The canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) was used to characterize relationship between species composition and environmental variables. The bee forage species richness and abundance were significantly greater on railway embankments than on road verges. The composition of species varied considerably; the number of bee forage species common to both habitats was only approximately 38% in entire data set. Most good-value bee forage species were recorded along the embankments of railways with an intermediate traffic volume. Bee forage species diversity benefits from the location of habitat elements (forests or meadows), primarily if the distance is <50 m. The lack of dense patches of valuable bee forage species in the road verges was related to the high density of non-nectariferous graminoids. Our results demonstrate how the value of man-made areas in an agricultural ecosystem can vary with respect to floral resources across the landscape, suggesting that it is inappropriate to generalize about agricultural systems as a whole without first addressing differences among habitats.

Factors responsible for the distribution of invasive plant species in the surroundings of railway areas. A case study from SE Poland

“…On the wide regional scale, railway areas are among the most common causes of loss and fragmentation of habitats (Ito et al 2013;Cerboncini et al 2016). On a local scale, they create valuable refuge areas for rare and endangered species (Hansen & Clevenger 2005;Wrzesień 2009;Májeková et al 2014;Casazza et al 2016) and enhance food webs of many taxa of invertebrates, including valuable pollinators of entomophilous crops (Bohan et al 2007;Kalarus & Bąkowski 2015;Wrzesień & Denisow 2016), farmland birds (Gibbons et al 2006), and small mammals ( Vandeveldea et al 2014;Cerboncini et al 2016). However, adverse effects of railway areas are also described.…”

Beekeeping promotes the traditional home-garden conservation in Ethiopia

“…Home-garden size was categorized into four classes with interval increments of 0.25 ha: small size (< 0.25 ha); medium size (0.25-0.50 ha); large size (0.51-0.76 ha) and very large size (0.77-1.00 ha) according to Mohan et al (2007). Vegetation cover was visually estimated and home-gardens were placed in categories ranging from "very low" (<10% vegetation coverage), "low" (10% -20% vegetation coverage), "medium" (21% -30% vegetation coverage), "high" (31% -40% vegetation coverage), and "very high" (41% -50% vegetation coverage) (Wrzesień and Denisow, 2016).…”