Local and landscape drivers of taxonomic, functional, and compositional diversity of wild bees in urban and rural parks in Central Europe

Abstract

Wild bees contribute substantially to biodiversity in agricultural and urban landscapes, yet the relative importance of local habitat conditions, landscape context, and seasonal dynamics in shaping their communities remains insufficiently understood. Here, we studied wild bee communities, excluding managed honey bees, in 22 urban and rural parks in Central Europe. A total of 5763 individuals representing 188 species were recorded. We evaluated bee abundance, species richness, Shannon diversity, functional dispersion, and beta-diversity components in relation to local habitat variables and landscape-scale gradients. Bee forage plant cover was the strongest predictor of wild bee communities, with positive effects on both bee abundance and species richness. Higher forage plant cover was also associated with lower Jaccard dissimilarity and turnover. Seasonal variation was significant for most community metrics, whereas the seasonal pattern in abundance was weaker. Landscape type, floral richness, bare ground, park age, and landscape-scale gradients showed no significant effects on the analyzed community metrics. Functional dispersion showed no significant responses to the measured environmental predictors. Fourth-corner analysis revealed no significant associations between environmental gradients and bee functional traits. Our findings highlight the importance of local floral resource availability for wild bee communities in studied parks. Increasing the cover of bee forage plants may therefore represent an effective strategy for supporting wild bees in human-modified landscapes.