Bee Abundance and Richness in Portland-area Home Gardens
Start Date
February 2018
End Date
February 2018
Abstract
Research has demonstrated that urban gardens support diverse, abundant, and intact bee communities in New York, California. Ohio, and the United Kingdom. In fact, the abundance and diversity of bees visiting urban gardens has been observed to approach, and even exceed, numbers in nearby natural and/or agricultural systems. To date, no comprehensive study has yet to be conducted of Oregon’s garden bees. We thus sampled 24 residential gardens in the Portland Metropolitan region, to document the abundance and richness of Portland’s garden bees. We used a combination of pan trapping and hand collection to sample bees. Study sites varied in their composition (i.e. pollinator garden, perennial plant garden, edible garden, lawn-dominated garden, etc.), and were located in one of three landscape contexts: (1) Urban Core: gardens located within Portland, in highly populated neighborhoods, (2) Forest Edge: gardens located within Portland, located adjacent to Forest Park, and (3) Portland Suburbs: gardens located outside of Portland, in a peri-urban landscape. This presentation will review the diversity of bees that we have collected and identified, and explore the ecological characteristics of Portland’s garden bees.
Subjects
Wildlife biology, Plant ecology, Conservation biology
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/25632
Bee Abundance and Richness in Portland-area Home Gardens
Research has demonstrated that urban gardens support diverse, abundant, and intact bee communities in New York, California. Ohio, and the United Kingdom. In fact, the abundance and diversity of bees visiting urban gardens has been observed to approach, and even exceed, numbers in nearby natural and/or agricultural systems. To date, no comprehensive study has yet to be conducted of Oregon’s garden bees. We thus sampled 24 residential gardens in the Portland Metropolitan region, to document the abundance and richness of Portland’s garden bees. We used a combination of pan trapping and hand collection to sample bees. Study sites varied in their composition (i.e. pollinator garden, perennial plant garden, edible garden, lawn-dominated garden, etc.), and were located in one of three landscape contexts: (1) Urban Core: gardens located within Portland, in highly populated neighborhoods, (2) Forest Edge: gardens located within Portland, located adjacent to Forest Park, and (3) Portland Suburbs: gardens located outside of Portland, in a peri-urban landscape. This presentation will review the diversity of bees that we have collected and identified, and explore the ecological characteristics of Portland’s garden bees.
