AgriPop Friday Talks

Friday's Agripop Talk

28 June 2013 - 11:30 - 12:30 Salle Ragondin
2 Master student project presentations

1. Bees and their landscape: 
Mapping the distribution of floral resources in agricultural landscapes and their use by wild bees

Lindy Mary Corredores Hurtado

Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé & Universidad Javeriana (Colombia)

 &

2. Rôle des adventices dans l’écologie de l’abeille domestique en plaine agricole

Yoanna Marescot

Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé

 You know, on average one in every three bites of food eaten by humans worldwide depends on bees and other pollinators for a succesful harvest (see here) and our markets and grocery stores would look quite empty without their services:

Source: http://io9.com/if-bees-go-extinct-this-is-what-your-supermarket-will-513604512

and see also this very interesting post on the story of hand pollination in China by Bug_Girl, a researcher in entomology and famous blogger about insects.

Bus so, why are bees declining worldwide? This is actually a tricky question, as there appear to be multiple causes at work (e.g. see here and here) and multiple stressors may be at work, such as parasites or pesticides. In intensive agricultural landscapes, however, one important problem appears also to be the supply of sufficient floral resources over the season. For example, where should bees go to once these massive blooms of rapeseed fields have disappeared after only few weeks and it will take several more weeks before the sunflowers start to open up? 

This is the problem tackeld by the projects of today's speakers, Lindy and Yoanna. 

Lindy will present us her results of an intensive mapping effort wild flower resources in our study area and the use of these resources by domestic bees. Yoanna has investigated the feeding ecology of the domestic bee in our study area, investigating how the bees can manage to cover the period without massive supply of flowers from the crops (rapeseed and sunflower). 

As this will be the first time you see Yoanna's project, here a short abstract, too:

Depuis la modernisation de l’agriculture, les paysages agricoles sont modifiés, s’appauvrissent en diversité écologique alors même qu’ils ont longtemps abrité une grande richesse spécifique, notamment au niveau de la flore herbacée des champs cultivés. Il s’agit plus précisément des adventices, qui voient, comme tant d’autres groupes végétaux ses populations régressées. Pourtant les adventices joueraient un rôle important comme apport alimentaire aux pollinisateurs et plus particulièrement à l’abeille domestique. Nous étudions ici le rôle des adventices  au sein d’une plaine agricole de Poitou-Charentes, caractérisée par deux périodes où les ressources pour l’abeille se trouvent en excès, floraison du colza puis celle du tournesol, et entre les deux: une période d’insuffisance alimentaire.

So, please come, listen, and discuss!