Received: 22 September 2017 | Revised: 1 March 2018 | Accepted: 29 March 2018 DOI: 10.1002/ece3.4116 ORIGINAL RESEARCH When beggars are choosers—How nesting of a solitary bee is affected by temporal dynamics of pollen plants in the landscape Anna S. Persson1 | Florence Mazier2 | Henrik G. Smith1,3 1Centre of Environmental and Climate Research, Lund University, Lund, Sweden Abstract 2Department of Environmental Wild bees are declining in intensively farmed regions worldwide, threatening pollina- Geography, Jean Jaurès University, tion services to flowering crops and wild plants. To halt bee declines, it is essential Toulouse, France that conservation actions are based on a mechanistic understanding of how bee spe- 3Department of Biology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden cies utilize landscapes. We aimed at teasing apart how foraging resources in the land- scape through the nesting season affected nesting and reproduction of a solitary bee Correspondence Anna S. Persson, Centre of Environmental in a farmland region. We investigated how availability of floral resources and poten- and Climate Research, Lund University, tially resource- rich habitats surrounding nests affected nest provisioning and repro- Lund, Sweden. Email:
[email protected] duction in the solitary polylectic bee Osmia bicornis. The study was performed in 18 landscape sectors dominated by agriculture, but varying in agricultural intensity in Funding information Svenska Forskningsrådet Formas, Grant/ terms of proportion of organic crop fields and seminatural permanent pastures. Award Number: 2005-788; Kungliga Pasture- rich sectors contained more oak (Quercus robur), which pollen analysis Fysiografiska Sällskapet i Lund showed to be favored forage in early season. More oaks ≤100 m from nests led to higher proportions of oak pollen in nest provisions and increased speed of nest con- struction in early season, but this effect tapered off as flowering decreased.