Department of Entomology; Center for Pollinator Research; Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA.
Department of Integrative Biology; Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior Program, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA.
Sci Total Environ. 2024 Nov 25;953:175783. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.175783. Epub 2024 Sep 2.
Non-native species have the potential to detrimentally affect native species through resource competition, disease transmission, and other forms of antagonism. The western honey bee (Apis mellifera) is one such species that has been widely introduced beyond its native range for hundreds of years. There are strong concerns in the United States, and other countries, about the strain that high-density, managed honey bee populations could pose to already imperiled wild bee communities. While there is some experimental evidence of honey bees competing with wild bees for resources, few studies have connected landscape-scale honey bee apiary density with down-stream consequences for wild bee communities. Here, using a dataset from Maryland, US and joint species distribution models, we provide the largest scale, most phylogenetically resolved assessment of non-native honey bee density effects on wild bee abundance to date. As beekeeping in Maryland primarily consists of urban beekeeping, we also assessed the relative impact of developed land on wild bee communities. Six of the 33 wild bee genera we assessed showed a high probability (> 90 %) of a negative association with apiary density and/or developed land. These bees were primarily late-season, specialist genera (several long-horned genera represented) or small, ground nesting, season-long foragers (including several sweat bee genera). Conversely, developed land was associated with an increase in relative abundance for some genera including invasive Anthidium and other urban garden-associated genera. We discuss several avenues to ameliorate potentially detrimental effects of beekeeping and urbanization on the most imperiled wild bee groups. We additionally offer methodological insights based on sampling efficiency of different methods (hand netting, pan trapping, vane trapping), highlighting large variation in effect sizes across genera. The magnitude of sampling effect was very high, relative to the observed ecological effects, demonstrating the importance of integrated sampling, particularly for multi-species or community level assessments.
非本地物种有可能通过资源竞争、疾病传播和其他形式的对抗对本地物种造成不利影响。西方蜜蜂（Apis mellifera）就是这样一种物种，它已经被广泛引入其原生范围之外数百年。在美国和其他国家，人们强烈关注高密度、管理良好的蜂蜜蜂群可能对已经岌岌可危的野生蜜蜂群落构成的威胁。虽然有一些实验证据表明蜜蜂会与野生蜜蜂争夺资源，但很少有研究将景观尺度的蜜蜂养殖场密度与野生蜜蜂群落的下游后果联系起来。在这里，我们利用来自美国马里兰州的数据集和联合物种分布模型，提供了迄今为止最大规模、最具系统发育分辨率的评估非本地蜜蜂密度对野生蜜蜂丰度影响的评估。由于马里兰州的养蜂主要是城市养蜂，我们还评估了开发土地对野生蜜蜂群落的相对影响。我们评估的 33 个野生蜜蜂属中有 6 个表现出与蜂场密度和/或开发土地高度负相关的高概率（>90%）。这些蜜蜂主要是季节性晚、专业的属（代表了几个长角蜂属）或小型、地面筑巢、季节性长的觅食者（包括几个熊蜂属）。相反，开发土地与一些属的相对丰度增加有关，包括入侵的 Anthidium 和其他与城市花园相关的属。我们讨论了几种缓解养蜂和城市化对最濒危野生蜜蜂群体可能产生的不利影响的方法。我们还根据不同方法（手网、盘捕、风叶捕虫器）的采样效率提供了方法学见解，突出了不同属之间的效应大小的巨大差异。相对于观察到的生态效应，采样效应的幅度非常高，这表明了综合采样的重要性，特别是对于多物种或群落水平的评估。
