VALOR is a multi-actor project that will develop a comprehensive systems based approach to develop a deeper understanding of the cascading impacts of pollinator shifts from flower to fork (and beyond). Our work spans seven localised “focal regions” across Europe, where we will explore the impacts of pollinator shifts on ecosystems, farm businesses and local communities through primary research and modelling. These will be supported by broader synthesis and modelling tasks to determine the impacts of pollinators on value chains, international trade and nutrition and highlight the risks to ecosystems and natural capital across Europe, under different co-developed future scenarios. VALOR aims to empower actors to better understand their relationship with pollinators and will produce a number of co-developed tools for landowners businesses and policymakers to better understand these risks and easily undertake their own studies by replicating our methods and employing our models. Throughout the project, VALOR will work through our existing networks of policy and business collaborators to maximise the engagement with our outcomes, datasets and tools, build synergies with the wider pollinator research community and effectively mainstream pollinators into decision-making at all levels throughout Europe.

With biodiversity loss escalating globally, a step change is needed in our capacity to accurately monitor species populations across ecosystems. Robotic and autonomous systems (RAS) offer technological solutions that may substantially advance terrestrial biodiversity monitoring, but this potential is yet to be considered systematically. We used a modified Delphi technique to synthesize knowledge from 98 biodiversity experts and 31 RAS experts, who identified the major methodological barriers that currently hinder monitoring, and explored the opportunities and challenges that RAS offer in overcoming these barriers. Biodiversity experts identified four barrier categories: site access, species and individual identification, data handling and storage, and power and network availability. Robotics experts highlighted technologies that could overcome these barriers and identified the developments needed to facilitate RAS-based autonomous biodiversity monitoring. Some existing RAS could be optimized relatively easily to survey species but would require development to be suitable for monitoring of more 'difficult' taxa and robust enough to work under uncontrolled conditions within ecosystems. Other nascent technologies (for instance, new sensors and biodegradable robots) need accelerated research. Overall, it was felt that RAS could lead to major progress in monitoring of terrestrial biodiversity by supplementing rather than supplanting existing methods. Transdisciplinarity needs to be fostered between biodiversity and RAS experts so that future ideas and technologies can be codeveloped effectively.

Insect pollination is known to increase avocado yields, with wild pollinators likely playing an important role. In central Chile, the rapid expansion of avocado orchards has resulted in highly diverse natural habitats being replaced by plantations, potentially negatively impacting wild pollinators and thus avocado production. This study aimed to understand the role of natural habitats and wild pollinators in avocado production by (1) exploring the relationship between flower visitor abundance and diversity, and proximity to natural habitat, (2) quantifying the pollination effectiveness of different insect taxa, and (3) measuring the contribution to avocado production of insect pollinators and exploring how this varies with proximity to natural habitats. We conducted flower visitor observations and controlled pollination trials at different distances to natural habitat in three orchards in central Chile, across three years. The results showed that flower visitor abundance, visitation, richness, and diversity were significantly higher closer to natural habitats. However, this relationship varied across distances, with wild insect abundance and visitation rates approximately 2.55 times higher, richness around 1.6 times higher, and diversity 1.5 times higher at the natural habitat edge compared to further inside the orchard. Insect pollinators contributed significantly to avocado production, with almost no fruit set when pollinators were excluded. Hoverflies and other flies were identified as potentially important avocado pollinators. This study demonstrates the importance of natural habitats and wild insect pollination services in crop production. We recommend that growers implement land management practices that protect and restore natural areas in and around their orchards to support wild pollinators.

ABSTRACTLand use change threatens global biodiversity and compromises ecosystem functions, including pollination and food production. Reduced taxonomic α‐diversity is often reported under land use change, yet the impacts could be different at larger spatial scales (i.e., γ‐diversity), either due to reduced β‐diversity amplifying diversity loss or increased β‐diversity dampening diversity loss. Additionally, studies often focus on taxonomic diversity, while other important biodiversity components, including phylogenetic diversity, can exhibit differential responses. Here, we evaluated how agricultural and urban land use alters the taxonomic and phylogenetic α‐, β‐, and γ‐diversity of an important pollinator taxon—bees. Using a multicontinental dataset of 3117 bee assemblages from 157 studies, we found that taxonomic α‐diversity was reduced by 16%–18% in both agricultural and urban habitats relative to natural habitats. Phylogenetic α‐diversity was decreased by 11%–12% in agricultural and urban habitats. Compared with natural habitats, taxonomic and phylogenetic β‐diversity increased by 11% and 6% in urban habitats, respectively, but exhibited no systematic change in agricultural habitats. We detected a 22% decline in taxonomic γ‐diversity and a 17% decline in phylogenetic γ‐diversity in agricultural habitats, but γ‐diversity of urban habitats was not significantly different from natural habitats. These findings highlight the threat of agricultural expansions to large‐scale bee diversity due to systematic γ‐diversity decline. In addition, while both urbanization and agriculture lead to consistent declines in α‐diversity, their impacts on β‐ or γ‐diversity vary, highlighting the need to study the effects of land use change at multiple scales.

Although biodiversity monitoring costs are widely cited as a constraint, there have been very few assessments of these costs and even fewer studies have assessed the potential benefits of this monitoring. Here, we synthesise available evidence, alongside a comprehensive assessment of the costs of proposed biodiversity monitoring to explore the relative costs, benefits risks and opportunities in biodiversity monitoring. We find that the costs of biodiversity monitoring, €0.5bn-€3.6bn/year, are greatly outweighed by the combined economic benefits and opportunities arising from the availability of co-ordinated, high-quality data, which are estimated to be >€25.2bn/year.

Agricultural intensification poses a global threat to many wild species, including insect pollinators. Despite the dependence of many companies on insect-pollinated crops within their supply chains, only a limited number of them actively implement measures to protect pollinators. This study aims to address this issue by developing a tool that businesses can employ to create effective pollinator conservation strategies. To create this tool, we utilized an existing roadmap as a foundational structure and adapted it into a practical tool through a comprehensive review of the literature and the development of specific methodologies. Subsequently, we applied this tool to a case-study company to further refine the methods and gather industry feedback. The developed tool identifies seven specific activities that companies can implement to achieve the following objectives: (1) understand the threats to pollinators, (2) recognize the significance of pollinators to their business (3) assess current pollinator actions, and (4) explore additional pollinator protection measures. The results from our case study indicate that increasing knowledge transfer to growers and supporting them to participate in environmental certification schemes could serve as effective strategies. The tool developed in this study aims to assist companies in identifying effective strategies to safeguard pollinators. Its potential implementation across a wide range of companies could greatly benefit growers and contribute to the conservation of various pollinator species.

Bees are crucial for food security and biodiversity. However, managed bees are increasingly considered drivers of wild bee declines, leading to stakeholder conflicts and restrictive policies. We propose avenues to reconcile wild and managed bee proponents and point out knowledge gaps that hinder the development of evidence-based policies.

Solar farms offer an opportunity for habitat creation for wildlife, including insect pollinators, potentially simultaneously contributing to both low-carbon energy and nature recovery. However, it is unknown whether cobenefits would persist under future land-use change given that habitat value is context dependent. For the 1042 operational solar farms in Great Britain, we predict their ability to support bumblebee populations (both inside and outside the solar farm) under three different socioeconomic futures. These futures represent alternative 1 km scale landcover projections for the year 2050 with accompanying narratives. We downscale these to 10 m resolution, spatially allocating crop rotations, agri-environment interventions and other habitat features consistent with the scenario narratives, to realistically represent fine-scale landscape elements of relevance to bumblebee populations. We then input these detailed maps into a sophisticated process-based model that simulates bumblebee foraging and population dynamics, enabling us to predict bumblebee density in and around Great Britain's solar farms, accounting for the effects of their changed habitat context and configuration in these different future scenarios. We isolate the drivers of bumblebee density change across scenarios and scales and show that solar farm management was the main driver of bumblebee density within solar farms, with ~120% higher densities inside florally enhanced compared to turf grass solar farms, although the exact figure was influenced by wider landcover changes. In foraging zones immediately surrounding solar farms, landscape changes had a greater impact on bumblebee densities, suggesting a single solar farm in isolation generally did not counteract the influence of wider land-use changes expected under future scenarios. In addition to providing insights into the potential future value of pollinator habitat on solar farms, our methodology demonstrates how combining process-based modelling with landcover projections that are downscaled to ecologically relevant resolutions can be used to better assess future effectiveness of habitat interventions. This represents a step change in our ability to account for species' interactions with socioeconomically driven futures, which can be extended and applied to other taxa and land-use interventions.

Farmers' willingness to continue participation in their agri-environmental program and maintain biodiversity measures in the long term is shaped by the nature of costs they perceive during implementation. Research emphasizes the need to account for both financial and non-financial costs, but holistic assessments which both put these costs into relation and account for farmers' varied perceptions remain lacking. To capture the plurality of perceived costs, as well as the plurality of viewpoints farmers have of these costs, we applied Q-methodology across four European study areas. Building upon scientific literature and expert interviews, we defined a Q-set comprising 41 cost aspects from four dimensions, i.e. financial, management-related, emotional and social costs. 34 farmers with different socio-demographic and farming background Q-sorted these cost aspects. Elicited viewpoints showed that participating farmers are either most impacted by perceived governance-related uncertainty, unproductiveness, lack of support, administrative burden, underpayment, or social non-conformity. Findings give indications of highly diverse needs when implementing a biodiversity measure, within and across study areas. The systematic insights into farmers' cost perceptions and the structure established for this Q-study can guide research and policymakers who aim to comprehensively explore and evaluate well-targeted ways to improve farmers' experiences of biodiversity measures within agri-environmental programs.

RestPoll is a transdisciplinary project aiming to provide society with tools to reverse wild insect pollinator declines and to position Europe as a global leader in pollinator restoration and set the future agenda for pollinator restoration worldwide. The RestPoll consortium combines the expertise of natural and social scientists, as well as representatives of NGOs, businesses and ministries. RestPoll - together with stakeholders ranging from individual land managers to public authorities - co-designs, evaluates and refines measures and cross-sectoral approaches to restore pollinators and their services. Central to RestPoll is the establishment of a Europe-wide network of pollinator restoration case-study areas with Living Labs, which are unique hubs for experimentation, demonstration and mutual learning at various spatial scales (field, farm, landscape, European scales), in landscapes dominated by intensively managed crops or grasslands. The RestPoll consortium explores, tests, evaluates and refines cross-sectoral pollinator restoration approaches to conserve biodiversity and to benefit nature and society. Our holistic approach also aims to engage in participatory planning and the development of new business models along the food value chain by engaging through newly-developed participatory approaches at diverse social, ecological and political scales. Learning outcomes are communicated to a diverse range of regional and European partners and collaborators, which allows for making a lasting impact beyond the end of the project.

Biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes is declining, but evidence-based conservation targets to guide international policies for such landscapes are lacking. We present a framework for informing habitat conservation policies based on the enhancement of habitat quantity and quality and define thresholds of habitat quantity at which it becomes effective to also prioritize habitat quality. We applied this framework to insect pollinators, an important part of agroecosystem biodiversity, by synthesizing 59 studies from 19 countries. Given low habitat quality, hoverflies had the lowest threshold at 6% semi-natural habitat cover, followed by solitary bees (16%), bumble bees (18%), and butterflies (37%). These figures represent minimum habitat thresholds in agricultural landscapes, but when habitat quantity is restricted, marked increases in quality are required to reach similar outcomes.

Pollinators are critical to Europe’s biodiversity, food security, and ecosystem resilience. Yet, their populations are declining due to habitat loss, climate change, and pesticide use. Under Article 10(2) of the Nature Restoration Regulation, Member States must improve pollinator diversity and reverse the decline of pollinator populations at the latest by 2030 and thereafter achieve an increasing trend of pollinator populations, measured at least every six years from 2030, until satisfactory levels are achieved. The MAMBO project (Modern Approaches to the Monitoring of Biodiversity) can potentially contribute to this goal through its development and demonstration of cutting-edge technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and insect camera traps, that can support how pollinators are monitored across Europe. This policy brief outlines MAMBO’s innovations, highlights emerging opportunities, and recommends actions for integrating these tools into EU PoMS.

Wild fauna and flora are facing variable and challenging environmental disturbances. One of the animal groups that is most impacted by this, concerns pollinators. Pollinators face multiple threats, but the spread of anthropogenic chemicals (i.e. pesticides) form a major potential driver of these threats. WildPosh is a multi-actor, transdisciplinary project whose overarching mission and ambition are to significantly improve the evaluation of risk to pesticide exposure of wild pollinators, and enhance the sustainable health of pollinators and pollination services in Europe. As chemical exposure varies geographically, across cropping systems, inside the crop system and among pollinators, we will characterise exposure by doing fieldwork in 4 countries representing the four main climatic European regions, Mediterranean, Atlantic, Continental and Boreal climate in Germany, England, Estonia and Spain. We will also develop experiments in controlled conditions on different species of bees, syrphid flies, moths and butterflies, and collect in silico data on their traits and on toxicity of pesticides. With WildPosh, we aim to achieve the following objectives:1. Determining the real-world agrochemical exposure profile of wild pollinators at landscape level, within and among sites;2. Using integrated and controlled laboratory and semi-field experiments to characterise causal relationships between pesticides and pollinator health;3. Building an open database on pollinator traits/distribution and chemicals to define exposure and toxicity scenarios by developing databases on ecological traits and the spatial distribution of pollinators in relation to their potential exposure to pesticide;4. Proposing integrated systems-based risk assessment tools for risk assessment for wild pollinators; and5. Driving policy and practice through interactive innovation, meeting the need for monitoring tools, novel and innovative screening protocols for practice and policymaker use.

Within the Drivers–Pressures–States–Impacts–Responses (DPSIR) framework, anthropogenic activities such as environmental pollution and climate change have consistently been identified as major pressures contributing to the alarming decline of bee populations. While the DPSIR framework provides a valuable structure for assessing the broader context of bee decline, it lacks the resolution to capture the underlying mechanisms that mediate the link between anthropogenic pressures and changes in bee population states. In particular, it does not consider how these pressures disrupt key biological processes that ultimately compromise bee reproductive fitness. This substantial knowledge gap currently limits our ability to pinpoint the causal pathways linking anthropogenic pressures to population declines. To address this limitation, we propose an extension of the DPSIR framework by incorporating a missing yet central component, namely mechanisms, which delineates the biological processes mediating the relationship between pressures and the observed bee population states. We identify and discuss five key mechanisms intrinsically linked to critical phases of the life cycle of bees, each directly affecting reproductive fitness. The delineation of these mechanisms offers a structured and experimentally testable approach for hypothesis-driven research, facilitates the understanding of causal relationships, and fosters more effective communication within the scientific community working on bee conservation.

Hedges and hedgerows are a familiar feature in many global landscapes and can support a wide range of benefits. These range from environmental to societal, including habitat for wildlife, provision of pollination and pest control services, shade and shelter for crops and livestock, and heritage and aesthetic benefits connecting people to nature in rural and urban areas. This study sought to explore perspectives on hedgerow benefits and research priorities. It also explored the knowledge needs of a range of stakeholders involved with planting, maintaining, educating and developing policy in relation to hedges and hedgerows. Stakeholders' needs were investigated through a series of workshops and surveys; they were compared with the findings from a systematic review of the literature to understand whether sufficient research and guidance is currently available. Stakeholders valued the benefits hedges and hedgerows provided to wildlife, nature-based services, such as provision of pollination and pest control, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and flooding alleviation in both rural and urban environments. The review of the literature identified gaps in the geographical coverage of hedgerow research as well as a disconnect between some benefits valued by stakeholders, such as flooding alleviation and climate change mitigation, and the availability of evidence on managing and planting hedges and hedgerows to maximise these benefits. Priority areas for future research and dissemination of research on hedgerows are highlighted, including targeting locations, contexts and regions where there is currently a lack of available evidence, supporting research on understudied factors or benefits, and finally implementing research that tests and compares hedge characteristics and management approaches in order to underpin practical management and policy.Read the free for this article on the Journal blog.

Pressures on honey bee health have substantially increased both colony mortality and beekeepers' costs for hive management across Europe. Although technological advances could offer cost-effective solutions to these challenges, there is little research into the incentives and barriers to technological adoption by beekeepers in Europe. Our study is the first to investigate beekeepers' willingness to adopt the Bee Health Card, a molecular diagnostic tool developed within the PoshBee EU project which can rapidly assess bee health by monitoring molecular changes in bees. The Bee Health Card, based on MALDI BeeTyping®, is currently on level six of the Technology Readiness Level scale, meaning that the technology has been demonstrated in relevant environments. Using an on-line survey from seven European countries, we show that beekeepers recognise the potential for the tool to improve colony health, and that targeted economic incentives, such as subsidises, may help reduce cost being a barrier to the adoption and frequent use of the tool. Based on the description of the tool, 43% of beekeepers appear to be moderately confident in the effectiveness of the Bee Health Card. This confidence could increase if the tool was easy to use and not time consuming, and a higher confidence could also contribute to raising the probability of accepting extra costs linked to it. We estimate that, in the worst-case scenario, the cost per single use of the Bee Health Card should be between €47-90 across a range of European countries, depending on the labour and postage costs. However, the monetary benefits in terms of honey production could exceed this. In order to successfully tackle colony health issues, it is recommended using the BHC five times per year, from the end to the beginning of winter. Finally, we discuss the knowledge needs for assessing beekeeper health tools in future research.

Response to Krahner et al. (2025) Build the EU Pollinator Monitoring Scheme on robust evidence. Journal of Pollination Ecology 38(13): 183-185. https://doi.org/10.26786/1920-7603(2025)846

Agricultural intensification and expansion are regarded as main drivers of biodiversity loss. This conclusion is mainly based on observed declines of local diversity (α-diversity), while effects on community composition homogenization (decrease of β-diversity) at a larger spatial scale are less well understood. Carabid beetles and spiders represent two widespread guilds and are important predators of pest species. Here we surveyed carabid beetles and spiders in 66 winter wheat fields in four northwestern European countries (Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and UK) and analyzed how their community composition was related to geographic distance (separation distance between any pairwise fields) and three environmental variables: crop yield (proxy for land-use intensity), percentage cropland (proxy for landscape complexity) and soil organic carbon content (proxy for local soil conditions). We further analyzed whether the relationship between carabid beetle and spider community composition and geographic distance was influenced by environmental variables. We found that, 55% and 75% of all observed carabid and spider individuals, respectively, belonged to species that occurred in all four countries. However, individuals of species that were unique to a particular country only accounted for 3% of all collected individuals for both taxa. Furthermore, we found a negative relationship between distance and similarity of spider communities but not for carabid beetle communities. None of the environmental variables were related to similarity of carabid beetle and spider communities, nor moderated the effects of distance. Our study indicates that across a great part of the European continent, arthropod communities (especially carabid beetles) in agricultural landscapes are composed of very similar species that are robust to current variations in environment and land-use.

There are substantial concerns about impaired honey bee health and colony losses due to several poorly understood factors. We used MALDI profiling (MALDI BeeTyping®) analysis to investigate how some environmental and management factors under field conditions across Europe affected the honey bee haemolymph peptidome (all peptides in the circulatory fluid), as a profile of molecular markers representing the immune status of Apis mellifera. Honey bees were exposed to a range of environmental stressors in 128 agricultural sites across eight European countries in four biogeographic zones, with each country contributing eight sites each for two different cropping systems: oilseed rape (OSR) and apple (APP). The full haemolymph peptide profiles, including the presence and levels of three key immunity markers, namely the antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) Apidaecin, Abaecin and Defensin-1, allowed the honey bee responses to environmental variables to be discriminated by country, crop type and site. When considering just the AMPs, it was not possible to distinguish between countries by the prevalence of each AMP in the samples. However, it was possible to discriminate between countries on the amounts of the AMPs, with the Swedish samples in particular expressing high amounts of all AMPs. A machine learning model was developed to discriminate the haemolymphs of bees from APP and OSR sites. The model was 90.6 % accurate in identifying the crop type from the samples used to build the model. Overall, MALDI BeeTyping® of bee haemolymph represents a promising and cost-effective "blood test" for simultaneously monitoring dozens of peptide markers affected by environmental stressors at the landscape scale, thus providing policymakers with new diagnostic and regulatory tools for monitoring bee health.