Rare and declining bee species are key to consistent pollination of wildflowers and crops across large spatial scales

Biodiversity promotes ecosystem function (EF) in experiments, but it remains uncertain how biodiversity loss affects function in larger-scale natural ecosystems. In these natural ecosystems, rare and declining species are more likely to be lost, and function needs to be maintained across space and time. Here, we explore the importance of rare and declining bee species to the pollination of three wildflowers and three crops using large-scale (72 sites across 5000 km(2)), multi-year datasets. Half of the sampled bee species (82/164) were rare or declining, but these species provided only similar to 15% of overall pollination. To determine the number of species important to EF, we used two methods of scaling up, both of which have previously been used for biodiversity-function analysis. First, we summed bee species' contributions to pollination across space and time and then found the minimum set of species needed to provide a threshold level of function across all sites; according to this method, effectively no rare and declining bee species were important to pollination. Second, we account for the insurance value of biodiversity by finding the minimum set of bee species needed to simultaneously provide a threshold level of function at each site in each year. The second method leads to the conclusion that 25 rare and eight declining bee species (36% and 53% of all rare and declining bee species, respectively) are included in the minimum set. Our findings provide some of the strongest evidence yet that rare and declining species are key to meeting threshold levels of EF, thereby providing a more direct link between real-world biodiversity loss and EF.

Automated summary

Rare and declining bee species play a crucial role in maintaining ecosystem function by pollinating wildflowers and crops in large-scale natural ecosystems.