Open access to research on wild pollinators

Research on bees, butterflies and other pollinating insects is vitally important. It shows us how to safeguard these pollinators and their valuable contribution to the ecosystem and our economy. It can also help guide public and private initiatives striving to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, which is why the EU has been actively investing in such projects over the past decade. To help make the results of this research more visible, the EU-funded Safeguard project team has published an open access compilation in the journal Research Ideas and Outcomes (RIO). “The open access compilation of the project in the journal RIO will not only increase the discoverability, visibility and recognition of research results, but will also establish a convenient digital environment for knowledge sharing, collaboration, pooling and re-use of research,” says a recent press release posted on the EurekAlert! website. The compilation in the RIO journal will ensure that Safeguard results will continue to be discoverable, accessible, interoperable and reusable even after the project ends.” The compilation currently houses fifteen published articles from different journals, linked through their metadata. Research topics range from floral resource overlap between honeybees and wild pollinators to potential environmental co-benefits of pollinator conservation . Interested parties can also consult an up-to-date checklist of around three thousand European bee and hoverfly species .

The latest addition to the compilation is a study presenting new records of the wild bee fauna of Serbia (“Hymenoptera: Anthophila”). Before we can effectively address the problem of the decline of pollinating insects in Europe, we need to fill the information gaps on the spatial distribution, diversity and abundance of species on the continent. The study is a step in this direction, given that Serbia is one of the least studied areas in Europe. As part of their research, the team carried out bee monitoring at fifty-four sites across the country. The two methods used – transect surveys and traps – enabled them to discover 312 bee species. According to the results, twenty-five of these species had never been recorded in Serbia. The researchers also confirmed the presence of twenty-six species with no records available in the 21st century. In addition, seventy-nine of the species examined were only known from literature data and six of the recorded species are considered endangered. An estimated sixty-seven species (of which ten have been recorded recently) have been assessed as data deficient in the European Red List of Bees, which identifies species threatened with extinction. The study not only serves to update the list of bee species in Serbia to 731, but, as explained in the study itself, “it also provides additional information on the European distribution, necessary for a new assessment at European level.” The aim of Safeguard (Safeguarding European wild pollinators) is to further expand the compilation and make it a “one-stop knowledge centre” for stakeholders by providing access to a range of reports, protocols, methodologies and research papers. The project ends in 2025. For more information, please see: Safeguard project website