Results from consortia

There are more than 20,000 species of wild bees worldwide and nearly 1,000 in France, playing an essential role in the pollination of wild and cultivated plants. This wide diversity of bee species, all differing in terms of morphology, mobility, floral preference, nesting sites and flight period, are collectively irreplaceable but unfortunately threatened pollinators. It is therefore important to assess the factors such as agricultural practices or land management, having an impact on the health of domestic bees (e.g. resistance to varroa mites) but also on the abundance and diversity of wild bees.

As a result of changes in farming practices, climate change and the increasing number of beekeepers and apiaries, tensions are emerging around floral resources, i.e. the nectar and pollen used by the bees. Long considered to be unlimited, these floral resources seem to be the object of a competition, both inter-specific between wild and domestic bees and intra-specific between domestic bees. This leads us to consider these floral resources as a common good to be managed collectively, involving not only beekeepers and biodiversity managers, but also the farmers who shape these landscapes and whose practices influence the availability of floral resources.

Biogeochemical modeling is used to assess the impact of agricultural activities and climate on carbon cycles and ecosystem nutrients as well as associated services or di-service, such as biomass production, emissions/carbon storage and nutrient retention. From a perspective of agroecosystem, DIMIVEA is interested in the physico-chemical and biochemical characterization of soil, the functional diversity of plant and microbial communities and the definition of indicators of ecosystem services in order to better simulate the provision of ecosystem services.