Abundance of pollinators and diversity of bees in Ghana and the effect of urbanisation and management practices

Bee functional diversity was determined based on the literature through a selection of traits relevant for pollinators, namely habitat, pollen specialisation, nesting behaviour, body size (inter-tegula distance measured on all specimens with a caliper), tongue length and sociality.

Habitats were described by a visual estimation of the proportion of six habitat features in a 200m radius around the sampling site, namely unmanaged ground vegetation, regularly mown or grazed vegetation, shrub layer vegetation, tree layer vegetation, bare ground and concrete. We estimated the floral resources in a 1m circle around the pan-trap by (1) counting the flowering plant species richness, (2) estimating each species' flower head surface and (3) counting flower head abundance. Identification and analysis were carried out at the University of Leeds, 2017.