Pollinator declines in Europe:overview of pattern and causes

Abstract – Koos Biesmeijer - texte en français pas disponible

Most people in Europe are now of the opinion that bees are declining.This is,however largely a result of media reports only partly supported by scientific data.Pollinator decline potentially affects pollination service in wild and crop plants.Indes more than 75 % of the worlds major vegetable,fruit and seed crops (Klein al.2007) and a large share of the flowering plants depend on animals of their pollinantion,which suggest that pollinator loss may have considerable economic and ecological impact.It is now clear that in Britain and the Nederlands bees are declining and with them the wild plants they pollinate (Biesmeijer et al.2006),but our understanding of the patterns in other parts of Europe and the causes of these changes remains in its infancy.To assess the status of European bees and get an idea of the major pressures threatening them,we complied national-level data on bee status from national redlists and expert opinion to provide an indication of the level of threat to wild bee population.Next,we asked experts in all countries to give their opinion on he most important threats to bees.Many people across Europe have provided data and expertise for this work,they cannot be mentioned above,but will be acknoledged in the presentation.