Beyond The Honeybee: How Many Bee Species Does a Meadow Need?
Published:19 Apr.2022    Source:University of Maryland

A meadow's lush array of flowers needs a full phalanx of bees to pollinate them -- far more than just the honeybees and bumblebees that most people are familiar with, according to a new study by a team of researchers including University of Maryland entomologist Michael Roswell. A postdoctoral associate in the Department of Entomology, Roswell helped demonstrate that less common bees are much more important for ecosystem health than previously documented.

 
Previous research on bees as pollinators tended to focus on specific plants -- frequently crops -- or on entire communities of plants as if they were a single entity. This tended to over-emphasize the contribution of the most common bees, especially since 2% of the bee species provided 80% of the pollination in crops. But no previous work had asked the basic question: How many pollinator species are needed to pollinate all the species in a given community of plants?