Long‐term organic farming and floral diversity promotes stability of bee communities in agroecosystems

Summary

Abstract Increasing bee diversity promotes pollination services on farms. Yet, given the high turnover in pollinator communities, without knowledge of how pollinator communities assemble, it is difficult to conserve or increase bee diversity. Thus, a mechanistic understanding of factors mediating pollinator community assembly could promote pollinator conservation measures. To assess the determinants of pollinator community assembly and structure, we surveyed bee communities and floral resources on 36 farms ranging from 0 to 43 years in organic production. We used niche‐based and stochastic species abundance models to characterise the mechanisms driving community assembly, and an additive partition of beta diversity to evaluate resource and species turnover (i.e. community structure). We th