URBAN BUZZ: Community gardens, such as this one in Detroit, may serve as critical oases for city-dwelling bees.PAUL GLAUM, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
A few years ago, Paul Glaum and fellow graduate students at the University of Michigan were talking about bees. The discussion centered on imperiled native bee populations in North America, and how to support the important pollinators in urban environments. Unlike intensive farming and pesticides such as neonicotinoids, which have been repeatedly linked with alarming declines in bee abundance, urbanization has a far less obvious impact.
Whether or not urban development harms bees “has been an open question for a number of years now,” says Glaum, who is about to start his sixth year in Michigan’s ecology and evolutionary biology grad program. “There’s a wide variety of results in the literature.” While some studies report that development is linked to decreases in bee abundance and ...
