Bridging the gap to save the bees: Empowering policymakers with biologically-realistic climate change predictions and actionable insights

Objective

Bees are important pollinators, safeguarding human health and protecting biodiversity. However, they are increasingly under threat by stressors caused by climate change and agricultural practices. It is thus timely and important to understand and predict how stressors, such as warm temperatures and poor nutrition, will impact bee persistence in an increasingly warm and degraded world. Unfortunately, data of bee responses to stressors is largely lacking and tend to be oversimplified, hindering the predictive power of current models in accurately assessing their vulnerability. Using Bombus terrestris and the UK as a model, my project aims to improve the accuracy of bee vulnerability predictions using both a biologically-informed and biologically-realistic approach. I will determine the cumulative impact of thermal and nutritional stress on colony persistence by conducting detailed experiments, and use these findings to create a vulnerability heat map of the UK to highlight conservation-priority areas. These maps and approach will enable conservationists and policy-makers to make impactful and sustainable decisions to curtail bee loss. This project will also further the advancement of and guide future research on other economically-important bees by conducting a comprehensive overview of published literature that will identify general patterns in multistressor impacts across species and uncover research gaps.