STEP PROJECT

Halting biodiversity loss is a key international priority, and central to the CBD and EU policy. The majority of global (and European) biodiversity is made up of insects and other invertebrate taxa, but little is known of the distributions and abundance of most such species, and even less is known about their dynamics and the threats they face. This ignorance concerning the status and trends of the majority of Europe's species is worrying, but it is even greater concern for species that play important functional roles, such as pollinators. Pollination is an essential ecosystem service, vital to the maintenance both of wild plant communities and agricultural productivity. These pollination services depend on both domesticated and wild pollinator populations, and both may be affected by a range of recent and projected environmental changes, with unknown consequences... The project Status and Trends of European Pollinators (STEP) will document the nature and extent of these declines,..

Also known as: STEP

Primary location: Reading United Kingdom