Conserving the diversity of bees in farmland

This project will conduct a programme of field research to understand how, and why, wild bee communities respond to changes in farm and landscape management, with a particular focus on the response of the ground-nesting solitary bee community to regenerative agriculture. This project stems from preliminary observations in our group suggesting that spring-flying bee communities may be more diverse, but emerge earlier, in arable farms with regenerative practices. The student will design a programme of observations and experiments over at least two years, to confirm or refute this apparent pattern, and to explore what it means for functional diversity and pollination services at larger scales. They will devise and test hypotheses to explain the mechanisms underlying differences in bee diversity, in agricultural landscapes with different structures and farms with different management.