Standardized transect walks outperform pan traps in assessing wild bee community in a Mediterranean protected area (Asinara National Park, Italy)

Abstract

The decline of pollinator insects in various parts of the world has increased the interest in studies on bee sampling. Because pollinator management and conservation policies depend on data representing their communities, knowledge of the systematic bias of sampling methods in relation to surrounding habitat is fundamental. This study examined the performance of standardized transect walks and colored pan traps considering differences in bee species richness, diversity, and composition, and the potential bias due to a different availability of floral sources throughout seasons. The study was conducted in a minor outlying island (Asinara, Italy), a natural park characterized by the prevalence of natural or semi-natural habitats and an Oceanic Pluviseasonal Mediterranean bioclimate. We found that transect and pan trap methods reflected different bee communities based on taxonomic families, genera, and species. In general, the transect method captured more varied samples than pan traps, despite the significantly lower number of individuals captured on transects. Moreover, pan traps captured more bees as floral abundance decreased, whereas transects showed greater bee abundance, richness, and diversity with increasing floral resource availability. In addition, 18 species out of the 68 observed in total were caught exclusively with pan traps, especially in July–October, when transect catches decreased due to substantial bloom reduction. Therefore, alternating the two methods according to season (i.e., transect in late winter-spring and pan trap in summer-autumn) might be the most suitable trade-off to obtain a better representation of the bee community by limiting sampling efforts and the negative impact on bee fauna.