Translating research into action; bumblebee conservation as a case study

Bumblebees belong to the genus Bombus, which comprises about 250 species, largely confined to the temperate Northern Hemisphere. They are wholly dependent on flowers for their energetic and developmental requirements. Most are social species, with nest sizes varying from 50 to 400 workers. As such, they have attracted considerable attention regarding their role as pollinators. There is a growing body of evidence that bumblebees have declined in Europe, North America and Asia in recent decades because of multiple causes probably including habitat loss, impacts of pesticides, competition from non-native species and the introduction of non-native diseases (Goulson, Lye & Darvill 2008a; Williams & Osborne 2009). Recent health problems affecting honeybees and a perception that other pollinators may be declining has led to serious concern that we might be facing a global ‘pollination crisis’ affecting pollination of crops and wildflowers (e.g. Aizen & Harder 2009). The global value of crop pollination by bumblebees is unknown;Gallai et al. (2009) estimate that for the EU25 countries in 2005, the value of insect pollination of agricultural crops was €14Æ2 billion, with a large (but unquantified) proportion of this coming from bumblebees. Most crop pollination delivered by bumblebees is because of a handful of common species, so that from an economic viewpoint there may be no need to conserve a diversity of bumblebee species. However, bumblebees also provide pollination services to natural ecosystems, with numerous wild plant species largely or entirely dependent on bumblebees for pollination. As bumblebee species each occupy distinct (albeit often overlapping) niches with regard to their patterns of floral visitation (e.g. Goulson, Lye & Darvill 2008b), it is probable that many bumblebee species are needed to maintain functionality of natural ecosystems (Williams & Osborne 2009). Bumblebee nests also support a diversity of parasitic and commensal organisms. For these reasons, it can be argued that bumblebees are ‘keystone species’, upon which the survival of many other organisms depend (Goulson, Lye&Darvill 2008a). Perhaps as a result of perceived declines, academic interest in bumblebees has risen markedly in recent decades. This can be simply illustrated by plotting the number of papers in Thomson’s ISI Web of Knowledge which have Bombus in the abstract or key words (Fig. 1). Over the last 20 years the number of papers published per year has grown steadily from 12 to 144, a 12-fold increase (for comparison, studies concerning two other pollinator groups, Lepidoptera or Syrphidae, have each increased by a factors of c. 2Æ5 over the same period, Fig. 1). The studies of bumblebees encompass diverse topics from ‘pure’ research of, for example, social structure, foraging behaviour, population genetics, pheromones and navigation, to applied studies addressing how particular landmanagement methods influence bumblebee numbers. There is no doubt that we understand far more about the biology of bumblebees than we once did, although there remains much more to learn (for example mating behaviour of many species has rarely been seen, and because natural nests are hard to find we know little about the factors affecting their survival and success). Recent papers on bumblebees (and many grant applications) often start by summarizing evidence for bumblebee declines, the implication being that the research may contribute to our understanding of the causes of decline and so help us to reverse them. However, publishing a paper, no matter how good the sciencemay be, does not in itself improve the fortunes of a single bumblebee. It is only when the research reaches the right audiences and is translated into practical action that it makes any difference. Very few farmers, gardeners, politicians or nature reserve wardens sit down of an evening to read a scientific journal, nor should we expect them to. If they did, they might struggle to make sense of most of it. Academics must take some of the blame for this situation; many researchers make little effort to communicate their work beyond the traditional use of scientific journals, publications which are all but incomprehensible to the layman. This in turn is largely because the traditional criteria used for judging academic success (publications and grant income) pay little attention to the *Correspondence author. E-mail: [email protected] Journal of Applied Ecology 2011, 48, 3–8 doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2664.2010.01929.x