Distribution of bumblebees across Europe

Abstract

Insect pollinators are a key component of biodiversity; they also play a major role in the reproduction of many species of wild plants and crops. It is widely acknowledged that insect pollinators are threatened by many environmental pressures, mostly of anthropogenic nature. Their decline is a global phenomenon. A better understanding of their distribution can help their monitoring and ultimately facilitate conservation actions. Since we only have partial knowledge of where pollinator species occur, the possibility to predict suitable environmental conditions from scattered species records can facilitate not only species monitoring, but also the identification of areas potentially vulnerable to pollinators decline. This data paper contains the predicted distribution of 47 species of bumblebees across the 28 Member States of the European Union (EU-28). Amongst the wild pollinators, bumblebees are one of the major groups contributing to the production of many crop species, hence their decline in Europe, North America and Asia can potentially threaten food security. Predictions were derived from distribution models, using species records with a spatial resolution of 10 km accessed from a central repository. Predictions were based on records from 1991 to 2012 and on a series of spatial environmental predictors from three main thematic areas: land use and land cover, climate and topography. These distributions were used to estimate the value of pollination as an ecosystem service. In light of the recent European Pollinators Initiative, this paper provides valuable information for a better understanding of where wild pollinators occur and it should be extended to other pollinator species.

High thematic resolution land use change models refine biodiversity scenarios: A case study with Belgian bumblebees

“…Bumblebees represent an ideal study species to test this hypothesis. There are considerable long‐term occurrence records available and, as a group, bumblebees have shown declines at the European scale (Biesmeijer et al., 2006; Carvalheiro et al., 2013; Kerr et al., 2015; Nieto et al, 2014; Polce et al., 2018; Rasmont et al., 2005). Previous research has shown that climate change alone is expected to have strong negative impacts for bumblebees at the European level (Rasmont et al., 2015).…”

Large variability in response to projected climate and land‐use changes among European bumblebee species

“…Overview of the analysis. MaxEnt models from Polce et al (2018) are adjusted through the exchange of land‐related predictor variables based on IAP2 land use and projected to 2050 and 2080 under various combinations of climate (WorldClim v1.4 RCP scenarios) and land‐use change (IMPRESSIONS RCP‐SSP core scenarios; Table 1). Net habitat changes per species are calculated as the difference between suitable habitat area in the future maps and suitable habitat area in the baseline map (based on mapped IAP2 land use for around 2010 and climate 1991–2012).…”

“…The distribution maps indicate for each species (1) the probability of occurrence and (2) presence/absence at a spatial resolution of 10 x 10 km, based on a maximum entropy (MaxEnt) modeling approach (Phillips et al, 2006) that establishes a functional relationship between species occurrence and 22 environmental predictor variables (Tables 2 and 3). Species occurrence data for the years 1991–2012 underlying the MaxEnt models originate from the Atlas Hymenoptera (Rasmont & Francis, 2018) and consisted of validated presence‐only bumblebee records, gathered from different data donors in Europe (see Rasmont et al, 2015 and Supplementary Material 7 in Polce et al, 2018 for further details), collated during the ‘Status and trends of European pollinators’ project (Potts et al, 2015). The environmental predictors were based on CORINE land cover for the year 2006 for land‐related variables (Bossard et al, 2000), ‘E‐OBS’ gridded meteorological data for bioclimatic variables (Cornes et al, 2018), and the ‘EU‐DEM’ for topography (EEA, 2017).…”

“…However, an improved understanding of how individual species react to different levels of environmental change is crucial to identify locations that require more detailed analyses on the interactions between land use and bumblebees and to design targeted land‐management policies that support as many species as possible under a changing climate. Here, we thus combine land‐use change projections for Europe from a regional integrated assessment platform running a full set of socioeconomic and climate scenarios (the IMPRESSIONS Integrated Assessment Platform (IAP2); Harrison et al, 2019) with established species distribution models (SDMs) for 47 European bumblebee species developed by Polce et al (2018). We do so in order to (1) quantify changes in bumblebee habitat suitability due to isolated climate and land‐use change effects at the individual species level and (2) assess the impact of different land‐use change futures on bumblebee habitat suitability under different levels of projected climate change.…”

Wildlife conservation strategies should incorporate both taxon identity and geographical context ‐ further evidence with bumblebees

“…Spatially referenced distribution data were extracted from Polce et al. (2018) with the addition of new original data held in the database hosted at the University of Mons (http://www.atlashymenoptera.net/page.aspx?id=169). This data set consists in occurrence data accumulated from published literature, as well as from bumblebee collections deposited in museums and universities.…”