Project data

Over the past two decades, dramatic honey bee colony losses in Europe and worldwide have revealed a broader issue: a marked decline in the diversity and abundance of wild pollinators. Despite various European and national initiatives, reliable methods to assess their effectiveness remain scarce. Moreover, major knowledge gaps persist regarding several pollinators’ status, the causes of their decline and the implications for ecosystems and human well-being. The project aims to develop and validate an integrated protocol to verify whether the mitigation measures foreseen by the EU Green Deal for agricultural practices are effective in halting and reversing the decline of wild pollinator biodiversity. The protocol will combine endpoints for pollinator presence, abundance and diversity with biomarkers assessing health at sub-individual, individual and population levels. These endpoints will diagnose biological alterations in pollinators caused by pesticides, climate change, resource deficiencies, habitat loss and diseases. From this project we expect to:
1) obtain baseline biomarker datasets reflecting the health status of key pollinator species;
2) evaluate the effectiveness of mitigation measures by comparing pollinator diversity and health status in orchards and vineyards;
3) establish an integrated monitoring protocol for assessing wild pollinator health and biodiversity;
4) provide guidelines for agencies and policymakers to evaluate mitigation effectiveness and guide decisions.

 

Project website: https://aempolly.unisi.it/

 

Disclaimer: This project is funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU and the Ministero dell’Università e della Ricerca (MUR) under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) – Mission 4 “Education and Research”, Component 2, Investment 1.1 “Fondo per il Programma Nazionale di Ricerca e Progetti di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale (PRIN)”. Funded under the PRIN 2022 PNRR call (D.D. n. 1409 of 14 September 2022). Project Code (Protocol): P2022YWSSX