Pollinating the urban jungle: Human impacts on native bee behaviour across urban landscapes

We are currently facing the Earth’s sixth mass extinction event. Insects are in global decline, a so-called “insect apocalypse” or “insectageddon” (but there is some debate about the extent). Bees are vitally important pollinators across the globe but are currently threatened by different human activities. Little is known about Australia’s approximately 2,000 native bee species in terms of their foraging strategies, pollination abilities, and cognition. Furthermore, even less is known about how these behavioural attributes are impacted by human activities such as urbanisation. My research will examine how urbanisation and other human-influenced environments are impacting bees in terms of their foraging, pollination, and cognition. Behavioural experiments will include examining pollination ability, flower preferences (invasive vs. native flowers), learning capacity (simple vs. complex relational tasks), and personality measures (boldness; aggression; exploratory behaviour) of bees originating from different landscapes along urban gradients. The behavioural measures of bees living in relatively undisturbed areas such as National and State Parks will be compared to those found in agricultural environments and more urbanised landscapes, such as suburban parks and gardens, remnant habitat, and urban greenspaces.