Mapping global bee research with traits and plant-pollinator interaction networks

Bees sustain key functions in natural ecosystems and agricultural landscapes, yet our understanding of their ecology is typically informed from studies concentrated on a few model taxa. To reveal how this may be biasing our understanding of bee responses and function in the environment we quantify global patterns of research attention across 69,682 bee-related publications to test whether research effort aligns with plant-pollinator network centrality, trait variation, public interest, and socio-economic context. Human managed bees take up most of the research effort; importantly this trend has been increasing over time. Plant–pollinator network centrality is unrelated to research effort; here we reveal genera with high centrality but low research attention as prime candidates for future study. Both pollinator management and sociality have an impact on research effort. Excluding Apis and Bombus (the most traditionally researched genera), managed bee genera are the focus of twice as many papers as wild genera, with the managed share rising over time. Our study reveals and quantifies persistent global research biases and highlights the need for monitoring, risk assessment, and policies that target neglected yet structurally central genera in plant-pollinator interaction networks.