Seventy five percent of the world's food crops benefit from insect pollination. Hence, there has been increased interest in how global change drivers impact this critical ecosystem service. Because standardized data on crop pollination are rarely available, we are limited in our capacity to understand the variation in pollination benefits to crop yield, as well as to anticipate changes in this service, develop predictions, and...

Summary A total of 1940 isolates from gut samples of 60 bumblebees representing Bombus pascuorum , Bombus terrestris, Bombus lucorum and Bombus lapidarius was collected and identified through state‐of the‐art taxonomic methods. The bacterial species diversity in these Bombus species exceeded that suggested by phylotype analysis through 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing, and revealed that B. pascuorum and B. terrestris had a unique...

Bumble bees are a group of pollinators that are both ecologically and economically important and declining worldwide. Numerous mechanisms could be behind this decline, and the spread of parasites from commercial colonies into wild populations has been implicated recently in North America. Commercial breeding may lead to declines because commercial colonies may have high parasite loads, which can lead to colonization of native...