Birds as indicators of bee community richness

Background/Question/Methods

Spurred by concerns about declines in pollinator populations, there is growing demand for tools to monitor pollinators across large spatial scales. These demands have largely gone unmet because current data are insufficient to support broad monitoring efforts. Fortunately, there is opportunity to develop indicators using well-surveyed taxa like birds. The potential to use birds as indicators of pollinators is further supported by the similar responses of many species to habitat and landscape attributes. Here, we harness data from eBird, a citizen science project led by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, to develop indicators of bee richness that can be used to guide the conservation of bee populations. We used standardized eBird and bee data, from 2010 to 2019, and a Bayesian variable selection algorithm to select bird species correlated with bee richness.

Results/Conclusions

Preliminary results suggest a bee richness in the eastern US may be reflected by presence of 10 breeding bird species on eBird checklists (2010 to 2014 model: adj R2 = 0.91; 2015 to 2019 model: adj R2 = 0.77). These 10 species are generally associated with open habitats. In cases where bee data are lacking, birds may be used as indicators of bee richness in ways that guide monitoring and conservation efforts.