National Biodiversity Data Centre<\/a> has written, \u201ctiny little volcanoes of soil\u201d can suddenly appear.<\/p>\nWhat happens inside these spaces is extraordinary. Working entirely on her own, the female mining bee digs a tunnel with her tiny front legs, sometimes descending as deep as a metre into the earth. Inside she builds individual cells along the tunnel\u2019s length and provisions each one with a ball of pollen and nectar. In this, she lays one egg, seals the cell and moves on. <\/p>\n
We can\u2019t fully protect pollinators if we ignore what is happening underground<\/p>\n
The larvae live in the darkness, spending the winter underground and feeding on the ball of food left by their mother, now dead. The following spring they will scramble up the tunnel and emerge into the sun as adults, ready to find a mate and breed. It is a life born underground, in the dark; their time outside is spent alone.<\/p>\n
Some solitary bees nest in existing cavities rather than digging, and can be extraordinarily particular about which ones. The plushly named gold-fringed mason bee, Osmia aurulenta, will only use empty snail shells on coastal sand dunes. If a male finds an empty shell, he will establish a territory around it to attract females. One bee species, one type of snail shell, one specific habitat. It\u2019s a high-stakes game, and one the bee is currently losing.<\/p>\n
Although they don\u2019t make honey or form colonies, solitary ground-nesting bees aren\u2019t peripheral creatures. They\u2019re extremely important pollinators. And yet, as Prof Dara Stanley of University College Dublin says, we know remarkably little about the underground part of their lives. These two worlds \u2013 the world of soils and the world of pollinators \u2013 have been operating independently, but are deeply connected. <\/p>\n
Stanley is a lead researcher on ProPollSoil, an EU Horizon Europe project launched last autumn with a budget of \u20ac7.7 million and 20 partner organisations across Europe. Its focus is on the relationship between soil health and pollinator health, which is timely given that, under the Nature Restoration Law, all EU member states are now required to monitor pollinators in a co-ordinated way. <\/p>\n
Stanley is animated about one finding that could reframe how we think about soil. Just like earthworms, solitary bees are soil engineers, but where earthworms need moist soil and go deeper into the summer to find it, solitary bees do the opposite \u2013 they prefer drier soils and are most active digging in summer. Soil science has long included earthworms in its understanding of healthy soil structure, but has almost never included pollinators. This is what ProPollSoil sets out to change.<\/p>\n
The citizen science part of the project is asking something simple of us all: if you find any signs of ground-nesting bee activity \u2013 small holes, bees flying low and entering the soil, or clusters of nest entrances close together \u2013 take a photograph, including the bee, and upload it to the project site. You don\u2019t need to know or identify the species. Keep an eye out for south-facing banks, disturbed soil in gardens, the edges of paths and tracks \u2013 anywhere that looks like a patch of bare ground with a hole in it. <\/p>\n
We can\u2019t fully protect pollinators if we ignore what is happening underground. One third of Ireland\u2019s wild bee species could go extinct by 2030 \u2013 that\u2019s just four years away. Scientists know why this is \u2013 they\u2019re starving, homeless and being poisoned by chemicals. Intensive tillage, compaction from heavy machinery, drainage works, the widespread loss of bare-earth habitats to hard surfaces and dense vegetation: all of these alter the conditions that ground-nesting bees depend on, and yet they have rarely been factored in to pollinator conservation policy. <\/p>\n
Bees have been digging, nesting and hibernating in the soil for millions of years. They urgently need our attention. If you want to help, visit propollsoil.eu<\/a>, or go to iNaturalist and search for the EuroBeeSoil project. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On days like these, when the light is no longer washed out and becomes directional again, the shadows…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[851,25816,61,60,3181,3094,5170,80,976],"class_list":["post-417997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-biodiversity","tag-ella-mcsweeney","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-longford","tag-national-biodiversity-data-centre","tag-storm-eowyn","tag-technology","tag-weekendreview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}