A Scoping Review. The Value of Urban Bee Research to Urban Planning

Abstract

Bees are relevant for several Sustainable Development Goals, most relevant of which is pollination. However, biodiversity rates have dropped sharply over the past decades, in part due to land use change. Contrarily, some research points towards cities as hotspots for bees. Taken together, it is unclear how bees respond to landscape characteristics. Therefore, a scoping review has been conducted in this work. To be included in this review, publications were required to be primary research and to include an urban weighing component regarding bees. The analysis was divided over four domains, including landscape characteristics and habitat characteristics. The results showed that natural areas are most important for bee biodiversity conservation, though urban areas still have advantages agricultural and rural areas. Moreover, habitat characteristics, especially floral characteristics, strongly correlate with bee biodiversity. Based on this work it is advised to maintain natural areas, improve on floral characteristics, increase area size of green areas, and focus on habitat characteristics for bee conservation.