Bumblebee abundance decreases with growing amount of arable land at a landscape level

Society depends on bumblebees for the ecosystem service in the pollination of crops. Bumblebee declines have been documented, mostly due to intensification of agriculture and loss of species-rich semi-natural grasslands, an important bumblebee habitat. To conserve bumblebee diversity and the ecosystem service of pollination, it is important to do analyses on multiple spatial scales to see how the intensification of agriculture affects bumblebees at a landscape level. In this study, I related abundance of bumblebees in 476 sites in southern Sweden (total abundance and abundance of declining/non-declining, long-tongued/short-tongued, and species preferring open terrain vs. forest boundaries) to amount of land use types (semi-natural grassland, arable land, forest, water and “other land use”) at 34 spatial scales (radii 100 to 40,000 m). Arable land had a negative effect on total bumblebee abundance at scales from 464 to 10,000 m and forest had a negative effect at scales from 2929 to 5412 m. Semi-natural grassland showed no clear effects – however, the partial regression coefficients were consistently negative. Arable land had a negative effect on non-declining species, long- and short-tongued species and on species preferring forest boundaries at larger scales, e.g. regions dominated by agriculture. Forest had a positive effect at smaller scales on species preferring forest boundaries and a negative effect at larger scales on species preferring open terrain and on declining species. The results suggest that arable land is a non-habitat for bumblebees and that semi-natural grassland does not affect bumblebee abundance at a landscape level