Summary
This field study of 36 farms demonstrates that longer-term organic management (up to 43 years) promotes bee community assembly through niche-based rather than stochastic processes, resulting in lower year-to-year turnover in bee species composition. Floral resource diversity appears central to community stability, though in urbanised landscapes, simplified resources drive dissimilarity through generalist bee species dominance rather than functional resource replacement. The findings suggest that sustained organic practices establish predictable, resource-mediated pollinator communities less vulnerable to compositional fluctuation.
UK applicability
The mechanistic findings on organic management duration and bee community assembly are likely transferable to UK agroecosystems, where organic farming is established and landscape urbanisation is similarly variable. However, differences in UK flora, native bee species pools, and climate may modify the specific resource dependencies and assembly pathways observed.
Key measures
Bee community composition and abundance; floral resource availability; niche-based and stochastic species abundance models; additive partition of beta diversity; species turnover; jackknife sensitivity analysis of model fit to resource and species identity
Outcomes reported
The study measured bee community assembly mechanisms, species turnover across years, and beta diversity partitioning on farms with varying lengths of organic production history (0–43 years). It assessed how niche-based versus stochastic processes and floral resource availability shaped pollinator community structure and stability.
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