Estimating bee abundance: can mark-recapture methods validate common sampling protocols?

Briggs, E.L.; BARANSKI, Christopher; SCHAETZ, Olivia MÜNZER; GARRISON, Gabriela; Collazo, Jaime A.; Youngsteadt, Elsa

doi:10.1007/s13592-022-00919-4

Cited by 16 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 78 publications

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“…We obtained satisfactory bee return rates of 46.6% (21 out of 45 bees in area B), 53.3% (24 out of 45 bees in area C), and 68.8% (31 out of 45 bees in area A). Marking techniques have been widely applied in studies with several conservation purposes and with a variety of permanent and impermanent methods (see Briggs et al, 2022). Our study proved that the method of marking and releasing bees can also be successful on different green-gray urban nature gradients.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 60%

Release experiments as an indicator of flying activities of stingless bees in urban areas

Arena¹,

Toppa²,

Martines³

et al. 2023

Front. Sustain. Cities

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Contemporary urban ecology views cities as heterogeneous and dynamic ecosystems, composed of biotic, physical, social, and man-made systems. In this context, urban beekeeping stands out as a growing practice that demands further studies. Many species of stingless bees (tribe Meliponini) have adapted to urban areas, while others are more sensitive. The composition of the surroundings where the beehive is located is important for the health of the nests and quality of the bee products. This work used bee capture and release techniques to evaluate the use of this methodology for releasing and monitoring native bees in urban areas and to identify whether proportion of green and gray urban nature areas affect the flying activities of stingless bees in an urban landscape. We used nests of Melipona quadrifasciata (mandaçaia), a species of stingless bee native to the Atlantic Rainforest, from three meliponaries located in different parts of the city of São Paulo. The travel time of bees in the landscape were related to the green urban areas up to 900 m in diameter from the meliponaries. Although we did not find a relationship between green areas and bee return times and numbers, it was noticeable that there was variation between the study areas, indicating that the release and monitoring methodology can be used in urban areas following the recommended modifications.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 60%

Release experiments as an indicator of flying activities of stingless bees in urban areas

Arena¹,

Toppa²,

Martines³

et al. 2023

Front. Sustain. Cities

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“…Another well‐known practice is capture‐mark‐recapture (‐release) methods. These are commonly used to estimate or survey population size and dynamics and are useful for long‐term monitoring and observing for trends while investigating factors that can influence population dynamics (Briggs et al, 2022; Pugesek & Crone, 2021). The information gained from recapture studies is not limited to population surveys but may also be useful in determining certain behaviors such as overwintering (Williams et al, 2019), nest searching (O'Connor et al, 2017) or flight and foraging ranges (Mola & Williams, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, and though other methods including active ones have been traditionally used, passive sampling, and bowl traps in particular, have been promoted as a way to monitor changes in bee abundance and species occurrence (LeBuhn et al, 2013) and their use has increased in the last 15 years (Portman et al, 2020; Figure 1a). However, the suitability of passive methods to address these questions and to inform management and conservation measures has also been questioned lately (see Briggs et al, 2022; Portman et al, 2020; Tepedino et al, 2015; Tepedino & Portman, 2021; Woodard et al, 2020). These authors argue that passive and non‐targeted trapping cannot provide reliable and timely measures of changes in absolute or relative population size, species richness or diversity, and that these methods do not allow identification of key habitat and resource requirements to develop successful management actions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Paints and markers often contain toxic materials, some permanent marking methods may create wounds that can become infected, colorful marks could cause bees to be more vulnerable to predation or alter their thermoregulatory ability, etc. (Briggs et al, 2022). Regarding the potential disease transmission through shared equipment, though it remains unexplored, emulating beekeepers' practices of material disinfection (Sperandio et al, 2019) seems to be a reasonable preventive measure in capture-release practices.…”

Section: Capture and Releasementioning

confidence: 99%

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Pursuing best practices for minimizing wild bee captures to support biological research

Montero‐Castaño

Koch

Lindsay

et al. 2022

Conservat Sci and Prac

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Bees are important pollinators of wild and domesticated flowering plant species. Over the last 30 years, an increasing number of scientific articles have been published on the ecology and conservation of wild bees. To achieve research goals, many studies have pursued the lethal take of wild bees.Although the impact of lethal take for scientific pursuits is likely negligible compared to the negative impacts of human-mediated phenomena such as climate change, urbanization, and agricultural intensification, it is important to evaluate the history of lethal take on scientific endeavors. In our study, we evaluated a random sample of 30 years of scientific publications on wild bees.Across 1426 surveyed publications, 536 reported the lethal take of wild bees. We found that 61% of these studies lethally captured wild bees primarily for species identification. Furthermore, we determined passive sampling of wild bees resulted in substantially more lethal collections than active methods per study. However, combined approaches of passive and active collection resulted in the greatest lethal take of wild bees per study. Finally, we determined that 64% of the studies did not provide deposition information for their samples, hindering additional research that could be done with them. The increasing availability of video and photographic devices and artificial intelligence approaches to identification, the development of low and noninvasive molecular methods, and the ease of sharing information, allow for a timely discussion on alternative routes and potentially new best practices in bee research. We focus our discussion on alternative methods for minimizing lethal captures for identification purposes and through passive methods, and for maximizing the utility of the data collected. Finally, we provide a framework for continued

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“…And the standardized sampling over several years allowed us to quantify changes in abundance over time, something many studies have limitations with (Portman et al, 2020 ). However, it is important to highlight that studies using passive trapping need to be interpreted with caution as the data do not reflect true population sizes (Briggs et al, 2022 ; Portman et al, 2020 ). This is because some species are more attracted to traps than others and because trapping results are impacted by context (Kuhlman et al, 2021 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Six years of wild bee monitoring shows changes in biodiversity within and across years and declines in abundance

Turley

Biddinger

Joshi

et al. 2022

Ecology and Evolution

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Wild bees form diverse communities that pollinate plants in both native and agricultural ecosystems making them both ecologically and economically important. The growing evidence of bee declines has sparked increased interest in monitoring bee community and population dynamics using standardized methods. Here, we studied the dynamics of bee biodiversity within and across years by monitoring wild bees adjacent to four apple orchard locations in Southern Pennsylvania, USA. We collected bees using passive Blue Vane traps continuously from April to October for 6 years (2014–2019) amassing over 26,000 bees representing 144 species. We quantified total abundance, richness, diversity, composition, and phylogenetic structure. There were large seasonal changes in all measures of biodiversity with month explaining an average of 72% of the variation in our models. Changes over time were less dramatic with years explaining an average of 44% of the variation in biodiversity metrics. We found declines in all measures of biodiversity especially in the last 3 years, though additional years of sampling are needed to say if changes over time are part of a larger trend. Analyses of population dynamics over time for the 40 most abundant species indicate that about one third of species showed at least some evidence for declines in abundance. Bee family explained variation in species‐level seasonal patterns but we found no consistent family‐level patterns in declines, though bumble bees and sweat bees were groups that declined the most. Overall, our results show that season‐wide standardized sampling across multiple years can reveal nuanced patterns in bee biodiversity, phenological patterns of bees, and population trends over time of many co‐occurring species. These datasets could be used to quantify the relative effects that different aspects of environmental change have on bee communities and to help identify species of conservation concern.

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Estimating bee abundance: can mark-recapture methods validate common sampling protocols?

Cited by 16 publications

References 78 publications

Release experiments as an indicator of flying activities of stingless bees in urban areas

Release experiments as an indicator of flying activities of stingless bees in urban areas

Pursuing best practices for minimizing wild bee captures to support biological research

Six years of wild bee monitoring shows changes in biodiversity within and across years and declines in abundance

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