<html>
<body>
Lebuhn, G., S. Droege, et al. (2013). "Detecting insect pollinator
declines on regional and global scales." <u>Conservation Biology</u>
<b>27</b>(1): 113-120.<br>
<dl>
<dd><x-tab> </x-tab>
Recently there has been considerable concern about declines in bee
communities in agricultural and natural habitats. The value of
pollination to agriculture, provided primarily by bees, is >$200
billion/year worldwide, and in natural ecosystems it is thought to be
even greater. However, no monitoring program exists to accurately detect
declines in abundance of insect pollinators; thus, it is difficult to
quantify the status of bee communities or estimate the extent of
declines. We used data from 11 multiyear studies of bee communities to
devise a program to monitor pollinators at regional, national, or
international scales. In these studies, 7 different methods for sampling
bees were used and bees were sampled on 3 different continents. We
estimated that a monitoring program with 200sampling locations each
sampled twice over 5 years would provide sufficient power to detect small
(2) annual declines in the number of species and in total abundance and
would cost U.S.$2,000,000. To detect declines as small as 1% annually
over the same period would require >300 sampling locations. Given the
role of pollinators in food security and ecosystem function, we recommend
establishment of integrated regional and international monitoring
programs to detect changes in pollinator communities. <br><br>
</dl></body>
</html>