Ground-nesting bee survival after soil translocation and disturbance
- 1University of Marburg
Abstract
Ground-nesting wild bees require suitable soil conditions for their below-ground development and overwintering life stages. Understanding how soil translocation and disturbance affect individuals and the following generations of bees is important for identifying conservation measures for ground-nesting wild bees. We investigated the effects of soil translocation and disturbance on the ground-nesting solitary spring mining bee Colletes cunicularius. In a replicated controlled design, we compared the effects of soil translocation with different degrees of disturbance on the number of surviving bees and the emergence time. We found that soil translocation and disturbance reduced bee survival but did not result in complete mortality, with some individuals surviving even under severe soil disturbance. There was no evidence that soil disturbance affected the timing of spring emergence, suggesting that disturbance is unlikely to alter the timing of nest construction and, consequently, the production of the next generation. Our results indicate that translocating soil containing overwintering bees could be a promising conservation measure to compensate for habitat loss caused by land conversion.
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BibTeX
@misc{mupepele2026groundnesting,
title = {{Ground-nesting bee survival after soil translocation and disturbance}},
author = {A.-C. Mupepele and A.-M. Klein and F. Fornoff},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.64898/2026.10.04.756489},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.04.756489v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Ground-nesting bee survival after soil translocation and disturbance
AU - A.-C. Mupepele
AU - A.-M. Klein
AU - F. Fornoff
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/04
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.10.04.756489
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.10.04.756489v1
AB - Ground-nesting wild bees require suitable soil conditions for their below-ground development and overwintering life stages. Understanding how soil translocation and disturbance affect individuals and the following generations of bees is important for identifying conservation measures for ground-nesting wild bees. We investigated the effects of soil translocation and disturbance on the ground-nesting solitary spring mining bee Colletes cunicularius. In a replicated controlled design, we compared the effects of soil translocation with different degrees of disturbance on the number of surviving bees and the emergence time. We found that soil translocation and disturbance reduced bee survival but did not result in complete mortality, with some individuals surviving even under severe soil disturbance. There was no evidence that soil disturbance affected the timing of spring emergence, suggesting that disturbance is unlikely to alter the timing of nest construction and, consequently, the production of the next generation. Our results indicate that translocating soil containing overwintering bees could be a promising conservation measure to compensate for habitat loss caused by land conversion.
ER -