The CEFE laboratory in Montpellier and the IMBE laboratory in Marseille are two major ecology laboratories in France. The PhD student (who has already been shortlisted) will work at the CEFE in the INES (Interactions Ecology and Societies) department and in the IBT (Biotic Interactions) team. He will benefit from the material, scientific and human support provided by the CEFE and will be enrolled in the GAÏA doctoral school at the University of Montpellier. There will be regular interaction with Benoit Geslin (by videoconference, direct interaction and visits to the IMBE) and with his team in the 'Ecosystem Vulnerability and Conservation' team at the IMBE.
The work of the ECOPOLLAGRI project will be promoted through the publication of international scientific articles and the creation of booklets aimed at players in the agricultural world, political decision-makers and the general public, and will be applicable to JEVI. In addition, we will be organising exchange days with various bodies such as the OFB, and various agricultural institutes and urban authorities such as ITSAP, chambers of agriculture, ministries (MTECT and MASA), etc.

In recent decades, unprecedented interest in pollinators and pollination ecology has been driven by a growing awareness of the dramatic decline in pollinators that has been observed in France and around the world (IPBES et al., 2016; Schatz et al 2021). It has now been scientifically demonstrated that this decline in pollinators is due to strong anthropogenic pressures, in particular changes in land use (habitat loss, homogenisation and simplification of landscapes), the intensification of agricultural practices via the increasing use of pesticides, pollution with in particular nitrogen deposits causing eutrophication, and several other features of global change such as climate change and biological invasions (Nieto et al., 2014; IPBES et al., 2016; Schatz et al, 2021). These effects vary between species, which differ in their ecological characteristics, which in turn influence their vulnerability (Nieto et al., 2014; IPBES et al., 2016; Duchenne et al., 2020).

Another scientific finding is the strong trend, both nationally and globally, towards ecological homogenisation, which has been demonstrated in particular in pollinator communities, specifically through the loss of rare and specialised species (example of bumblebee communities, Bommarco et al., 2011; Deguines et al. 2016), but also for a wide range of wild bees and other taxonomic groups of pollinators (Carvalheiro et al., 2013; IPBES et al., 2018; Grab et al. 2019).
These declines have consequences for insect-pollinated wild plants, and a few studies have linked pollinator declines to declines in insect-pollinated plants (Biesmeijer et al., 2006; Wei et al., 2021) or predicted that plant extinctions under climate change are more likely to trigger animal co-extinctions than vice versa (Schleuning et al., 2016). Moreover, it is clear that such a decline in wild pollinators contrasts sharply with the ever-increasing demand for pollination in crop production (Klein et al., 2006; Aizen and Harder, 2009; Garibaldi et al., 2013; IPBES et al., 2016; Aizen et al., 2019, 2020). Over the last five decades, agriculture has become increasingly dependent on pollinators, with a threefold increase in crops requiring pollination (Aizen and Harder, 2009; Aizen et al., 2020); Some regions of the United States are even seeing their agricultural production limited by a lack of pollinators (Reilly et al., 2020). Wild pollinators and their decline highlights their vital importance in maintaining ecosystems and pollinating crops, which is essential for agricultural production and human well-being (Senapathi et al., 2021). This information has helped to raise awareness in society (via NGOs) and to inform policy-makers of the urgent need to conserve pollinators by identifying the drivers of ecologically, economically and socially unsustainable practices.
Faced with this unprecedented situation, regular updates and assessments are needed, as well as the provision of databases both on pollinator ecology and on the identity and traits of pollinators essential for pollinating wild and cultivated plants (IPBES, 2016, Drossart and Gérard, 2020, Schatz et al 2021). These assessments should help us to identify, and then adopt, bee-friendly lifestyles and practices in order to put an end to the factors driving pollinator decline and, at the same time, encourage government action to conserve wild pollinators (Drossart and Gérard, 2020; Schatz et al 2021) and to establish detailed trajectories for the ecological transition of pollinator-dependent agricultural production (Vanbergen et al, 2020; Schatz et al 2021).
However, there is currently no unified, standardised database in mainland France that brings together scientific knowledge on the biology and ecology of wild bees. Nor is there any synthetic information on bee species and their ecological traits linked to the pollination of cultivated plants (this information has only recently been available in the UK for a few cultivated plants, Hutchinson et al 2021). As a result, it remains impossible, in the French context, to provide complete answers to simple but crucial questions: Which species of wild bee pollinates which cultivated or wild plant? Which species of wild bee is present at a given time to pollinate agricultural crops or wild plants? How can wild bees be encouraged to pollinate crops and wild plants?
Answering these questions is crucial for the future of pollination on a national scale. This is why we are organising the objectives of the ECOPOLLAGRI project into 5 WP (wordpackages):
1) To create and analyse a database on the biological and ecological characteristics of wild bees in mainland France. (WP1)
2) Document the known pollinators for each crop. Identify crops where knowledge is lacking or incomplete. (WP2)
3) Link the ecological traits of pollinators to their interactions with crops and understand which traits are associated with crop pollination. (WP3)
4) Identifying vulnerabilities, understanding the dependence of crops on pollinators (wild and domestic), and anticipating the impacts of species loss, particularly those linked to the use of pesticides and ecological traits on agricultural production. Exploring the relationship between domesticated pollinators (honeybees) and wild pollinators on crops, and understanding the dependence of crops on these functional groups. (WP4)
5) Propose alternative management practices to the use of pesticides, enabling pollinators to remain in agricultural landscapes, based on their ecological needs and life cycle (WP5).
In this way, we will be able to provide information on the pollinators that are essential to the production of each crop, as well as identifying their dependence on natural habitats and determining their sensitivity to the use of pesticides (taking into account the social organisation of the species and their ability to recolonise areas that have been impacted). This information can be used both to improve agricultural yields and to ensure the conservation of wild pollinators.
More generally, these two objectives are highly general in nature and will be crucial in stimulating French research into pollinator ecology. They are also very much in line with several aspects of the pollinator plan.

Bibliography
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Aizen, MA, Aguiar, S, Biesmeijer, JC, Garibaldi, LA, et al. 2019. Global agricultural productivity is threatened by increasing pollinator dependence without a parallel increase in crop diversification. Global Change Biology 25,3516-3527 https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.14736
Biesmeijer, J.C., Roberts, S.P.M., Reemer, M., Ohlemüller, R., Edwards, M., Peeteres, T., Schaffers, A.P., Potts, S.G., Kleukers, R., Thomas, C.D., Settle, J., Kunin, W.E., 2006. Parallel declines in pollinators and insect pollinated plants in Britain and in the Netherlands. Science 313, 351-354.
Bommarco, R., Lundin, O., Smith, H.G., Rundlöf, M., 2011. Drastic historic shifts in bumble-bee community composition in Sweden. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Proc. Roy. Soc. B. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2011.0647
Carvalheiro, L.G., Kunin, W.E., Keil, P., et al. 2013. Species richness declines and biotic homogenization have slowed down for NW-European pollinators and plants. Ecology Letters, 16(7), 870–878. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.12121
Deguines, N., Julliard, R., De Flores, M., Fontaine, C., 2016. Functional homogenization of flower visitor communities with urbanization. Ecology and Evolution 6(7), 1967-1976.
Drossart, M. & Gérard, M. 2020. Beyond the decline of wild bees: optimizing conservation measures and bringing together the actors. Insects, 11, https://doi.org/10.3390/insects11090649
Duchenne, F., Thébault, E., Michez, D., Elias M., Drake M., Persson M., Rousseau-Piot J.S., Pollet M., Vanormelingen P., Fontaine C. 2020. Phenological shifts alter the seasonal structure of pollinator assemblages in Europe. Nature Ecology & Evolution Nat Ecol Evol 4, 115–121 (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-1062-4
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IPBES 2018. The IPBES regional assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services for Europe and Central Asia. Rounsevell, M., Fischer, M., Torre-Marin Rando, A., Mader, A. (Eds.). Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, Bonn, Germany
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Objectives
The first objective (WP1) will be to analyse the database on the biological and ecological characteristics of wild bees, created by David Genoud on the basis of his national expertise on this group and a review of recent bibliography. We are awaiting this funding to analyse this unique database on this taxonomic group. This analysis will make it possible not only to quantify the values for each criterion precisely, but also to determine the associations between criteria and even to define functional groups of bees with similar combinations of criterion values. The database consists of 61 columns (each corresponding to a biological or ecological characteristic for a wild bee species) and 1,000 rows (more precisely, 975 rows, each corresponding to a bee species), giving a total of 60,000 items of information based on expert or scientific opinion. This work was funded by the GDR Pollinéco, itself funded by the MTE and INEE. The aim will be to make this database public once the data has been fully analysed and published in the form of international scientific publications and popularised articles aimed at the agricultural and conservation communities. Planned for year 1
In parallel (WP2), we will conduct a literature review of crop pollinators. The idea is to create a database that will inform the identity of pollinator species visiting each of the plants grown in France (with extension in Europe when the information is available). This review will be based on a citizen science action (phyt'abeilles program) with agricultural high schools in collaboration with the Bergerie Nationale but also exchanges with a network of national and European experts, specialists in crop pollination. This information will allow us to understand crop dependencies on pollinators (wild and domestic) and also to identify crops for which the pollination system and associated pollinators are still poorly understood. Occasionally, it is possible to carry out short field missions, or work with experts to obtain additional information. By crossing the results of this database, the observations from all the members of the GDR Pollinéco, and the scientific bibliography and the grey one, we will establish the list of wild bees involved in the pollination of all species cultivated in metropolitan France but also species of the French flora. Various national experts will be asked to complete this bibliographic work. We will also collaborate with French experts of other types of pollinators (syrphs, other diptera, beetles, lepidoptera) via the GDR Pollinéco to establish the most comprehensive lists possible. These lists will be very useful for improving crop yield and wild plant conservation. Planned for years 1 and 2.
Once these two bases are obtained, we will combine them to identify the traits of pollinators associated with crops (WP3). The idea is to analyze the interactions between bioecological character of bees (and other pollinators) for each cultivated plant in order to understand how its structure is complex interaction network to assess its fragility and robustness. The results will allow us to identify the crucial characteristics of species in the functioning of ecosystems, which will then be used to anticipate the effect of the loss of ecological traits on agricultural yields on a French scale with a conventional use of pesticides or a lesser or no use (WP4). In addition, the objective will also be to evaluate the resources in terms of pollen and nectar provided by entomophilous cultures. The aim is to understand the co-dependency of pollinators to crops and vice versa. With a view to reducing pesticides, estimating the resource produced by crops will also make it possible to assess the amount of transfer of pesticides from the plant compartment to the pollinator compartment. Year 2 and 3.
Finally, our goal will be to produce specific recommendations for farmers and policy makers to promote both pollination of crops (those that depend on them) and pollinator conservation (those allowing this pollination) in order to contribute to the development of alternatives to the use of pesticides (WP5). Indeed, the acquisition of the bioecological characteristics of species will also allow us to understand the dependence of these species on the different components of the landscape to complete their life cycle. We will take into account the preferences of wild bees for their diet (for fabaceae for example) and their nesting (need for bare soil or hollow stems for example). It will also explore the synchronicity between the flowering period of cultivated plants and those of activity of different species of wild bees, especially in view of the ongoing climate change. The ability of different species of wild bees to recolonize a cultivated plot will also be taken into account. These management recommendations will be built in year 3 in conjunction with taxonomic experts; our objective here will be to provide operational elements to understand this capacity, particularly in terms of diversity and abundance of floral resources, but also nesting sites for pollinating species of target crops. Knowing who pollinates each cultivated plant and how it does it are crucial information to develop a new approach that contributes to an ecological transition of agriculture based on solutions based on nature.
All of these workpackages will be published in international journals and also in extension booklets for landscape actors and policy makers, as well as for agricultural professionals. We collaborate with TelaBotanica to integrate the list of wild bees and pollinators of wild plants on their website via the eFlore species sheets. For cultivated plants, we will collaborate with agricultural groups and technical institutes associated with different types of crops (rapeseed and protein crops, other major crops, arboriculture, market gardening, aromatic and medicinal plants, etc.). To promote the valorization of the results produced in this study, we are ready to bring information in agricultural media such as in the form of inserts in the Plant Health Bulletin 2.0. This information will provide elements of knowledge and interest for agricultural production on the diversity of pollinators, their role in agriculture, the impact of their decline on agriculture, their role on yields and recommendations to promote their implementation. We will also be able to disseminate them to the resource centres linked to the future Pollinator Mooc (performed March to May 2023) and the pollinator plan in which we are heavily involved.
All the work of the ECOPOLLAGRI project will greatly stimulate French research on the pollination of cultivated and wild plants to complete and update this knowledge. They will also have a very strong genericity in applications for cultivated plants and in the emergence of alternative solutions to the use of pesticides by taking better into account pollinators, but also to inform the other projects of the Ecophyto program and for the actors of the conservation of wild plants. They will be an important lever in the search for alternative solutions to the use of pesticides.

Expected results
The expected results will be of different kinds:
- Training of a PhD student with a promising future given the importance of the issues addressed;
- A standardized and up-to-date national database on the biology and ecology of all wild bees in metropolitan France (bringing France up to a few other European countries with such a database);
- An operational list of wild pollinators of cultivated and wild plants in metropolitan France (unique at European level);
- A predictive tool to identify the crops most dependent on pollinators and their functional traits and vulnerabilities to global changes and pesticide use;
- Several world-class scientific publications on all of these topics, not to mention their popular translation for target actors;
- Mutualisation of interest with the different axes of the pollinator plan, promoting the emergence of alternative practices to the use of pesticides;
- collaboration with French agricultural high schools and support for the training of future farmers (interactions with the Bergerie Nationale).