NUTRIBEE: Impact of nutrition on wild bee colonie
eli | Louvain-la-Neuve
Internal reference number : ARC 22/27.121
Start date: 01/10/22 End date: 01/10/2027
Pollination is a major regulating service to sustain plant biodiversity and food production. The multidisciplinary NUTRIBEE project focuses on the nutritional quality of harvested pollen and nectar and its impact on the successful wild bee population development.
Objectives
- Map the quantities of available pollen and nectar along the seasons by combining field campaign with remote sensing image analysis of drone, aerial and satellite data.
- Determine the quality of pollen and nectar resources of the key flower species from each landscape based on chemical analysis and literature review of trait data.
- Assess the combined impact of soil pollution (pesticides and fertilizers) and floral resource availability (in space and time) on the health and survival of wild bees’ colonies.
- Model soil-plant-insect interaction using agent-based model to identify the management priorities to sustain wild bee population in different landscapes and hence contribute to the restoration of the farmland ecosystems.
- Train and apply deep learning model in order to upscale spatially explicit models of wild bees’ colonies.
Research team
Pierre Defourny
Head of the Geomatics research lab focusing on land monitoring by satellite remote sensing from local to global scale and land use modelling using geographical information systems to support agriculture, forestry and land use planning. He was the science leader of the ESA projects Sen2Agri, Sen4CAP, Sen4STAT and the Land Cover component in the Climate Change Initiative launched in 2010 by the European Space Agency to improve the simulation provided by the global climate models. He has also conducted several research projects on remotely sensed time series analysis by the Belgian Science Policy in the past ten years (BELCAM project). His research develops operational methods to extract statistical information from global time series and to link those times series with various applications including crop monitoring, carbon cycle and climate models.
Research group
- PhD student: 1
- IT technician: 1
- Post-Doc: 1, Julien Radoux. An expert on geodata analysis with machine learning approaches. His experience in the lab of geomatics from UCLouvain brought him to develop integrated tools for biodiversity monitoring using remote sensing and GIS techniques.
Yannick Agnan
Yannick Agnan's research focuses on the dynamics of contaminants, such as trace elements and pesticides, as well as organic matter at the interfaces of terrestrial compartments: atmosphere, pedosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, and biosphere. He is interested in contrasting environments, whether natural (temperate forests and polar ecosystems) or anthropogenic (agroecosystems and urban environments). For a better understanding of transfer processes, he uses several geochemical tracers, such as stable isotopes and rare earth elements.
Research group
- PhD student: 1
- Technicians: 2
Anne-Laure Jacquemart
Graduated with a degree in botanical sciences in 1987, ALJ completed a doctoral thesis on a new field for UCLouvain, the ecology of pollination and reproduction of plant species. As a qualified FNRS researcher, lecturer and then professor, she developed this theme with multiple collaborations at different levels (from local to international). Interested in all aspects of plant ecology, she became a generalist teacher and researcher in plant ecology, from systematics to environmental management.
Research group
- PhD student : 1
- Technician : 1
Contact point
Anne-Laure Jacquemart
Role on the project: Principal investigator
Institute: Earth and Life Institute - ELI
Email address: anne-laure.jacquemart@uclouvain.be
Activities organised
Poster presentation at conference
1. Conference on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research for sustainable development, 24-25/11/2022, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgique. ARC Project NUTRIBEE, pollen nutritional quality as a critical link between landscape, biodiversity, and bee health. Radoux, J., Jeannerod, L., Buron, M., Agnan, Y., Defourny, P. & Jacquemart, A.-L.
2. ELI-Day, 25/05/2023, Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgique. Combined influences of floral resources, soil environment, and land use on plant-bee interactions at the landscape scale. Buron, M., Defourny, P., Jeannerod, L., Jacquemart, A.-L., Radoux, J. & Agnan, Y.
3. Centennial IUSS, 19-21/05/2024, Florence, Italie. Environmental persistence and fate of neonicotinoids insecticides in Belgian agricultural soils. Buron, Maxime ; Foguenne, Emile ; Blondel, A., Defourny, P., Jacquemart, A.-L., Radoux, J., Jeannerod, L. & Agnan, Y.
4. Eurobee10, 16-19/2024, Tallinn, Estonie. Quantifying floral resources and habitat quality of pollinators in agricultural landscapes using field data and UAV tele-detection. Buron, M., Radoux, J., Jeannerod, L., Agnan, Y., Defourny, P. & Jacquemart, A.-L.
5. Video tape. Capsule vidéo. Comment récolter et analyser le pollen floral. L. Jeannerod
Master thesis
Braquenier I. 2023. Influence de l’azote des sols agricoles sur les ressources florales. Master Bio-ingénieur, UCLouvain.
Brookes S. 2023. Bee nutrition and pollen quality in plants from the Fabaceae Asteraceae, and Rosaceae families in the context of agricultural interests in Belgium. Master Bio-ingénieur, UCLouvain.
Cioni L. 2023. Influence du type de pollinisateur d’espèces végétales entomophiles européennes sur la composition nutritionnelle du pollen. Master Bio-ingénieur, UCLouvain.
Huyghebaert T. 2023. Influence de la température et de la composition du pollen sur la santé des colonies de Bombus terrestris. Master Bio-ingénieur, UCLouvain.
Meurmans V. 2023. Dynamique spatio-temporelle de la disponibilité des ressources florales en paysages agricoles. Master Bio-ingénieur, UCLouvain.
Momin L. 2023. Influence du mode de pollinisation sur les qualités nutritionnelles du pollen d’espèces entomophiles et anémophiles. Master Bio-ingénieur, UCLouvain.
Moreau J. 2023. Évaluation de la disponibilité des ressources florales dans les paysages agricoles wallons en début de saison de floraison. Master Bio-ingénieur, UCLouvain.
Overzet C. 2023. The influence of temperature and pollen composition on the development and health of microcolonies of Bombus terrestris. Master Bio-ingénieur, UCLouvain.
Baussart T. & Dumoulin T. 2024. Influence de la densité et de la diversité des espèces florales sur le développement des colonies et des individus de Bombus terrestris dans les paysages agricoles wallons. Master Bio-ingénieur, UCLouvain.
Budin M. 2024. Quantification printanière des ressources florales de haies et bandes aménagées MAEC et influences sur les insectes floricoles appartenant aux Diptères et aux Hyménoptères. Master Bio-ingénieur, UCLouvain.
Deghorain L. 2024. Influence du type de pollination sur la composition chimique du pollen d’espèces ligneuses. Master Bio-ingénieur, UCLouvain.
PhD thesis
Léna Jeannerod. Influence of pollen quantity and nutritional quality on wild bee foraging choices in agricultural landscapes. 09/10/2025. PhD supervisor: Anne-Laure Jacquemart
Publications
Articles published in peer-reviewed journal
1. Reverté, S., Gérard, M., Bodson, M, Descamps, C., Gosselin, M., Jacquemart, A.-L., Louvieaux, J., Smagghe, G., Vandamme, P., Vereecken, N.J. & Michez, D. 2023. Intraspecific size shifts in generalist bumblebees and flowers lead to low functional consequences. Ecosphere, 14:e4640. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.4640
2. Jeannerod, L., Carlier, A., Schatz, B., Daise, C., Richel, A., Agnan, Y., Baude, M., Jacquemart, A.-L. 2022. Some Bee-pollinated plants provide nutritionally incomplete pollen amino acid resources to their pollinators. PLoS ONE 17(8): e0269992. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0269992
3. Yang, N., Rongione, C., Jacquemart, A.-L., Draye, X. & De Vleeschouwer, C. 2024. On the importance of diversity when training deep learning segmentation models with error-prone pseudo-labels. Applied Sciences, 14(12): 5156, 16pp. https://doi:10.3390/app14125156
4. Inès Gancedo Tarano, Thomas Boumal, Marc De Toffoli, Maxime Buron, Tomasz Kiljanek, Anne-Claire Martel, Anne-Laure Jacquemart & Yannick Agnan. Are cover crops a potential threat for pollinators due to clothianidin residues in floral resources?. Environ Monit Assess 197, 1260 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-025-14741-9
5. Maxime Buron, Émile Foguenne, Alodie Blondel, Thomas Marchetti, Léna Jeannerod, Anne-Laure Jacquemart, Pierre Defourny, Julien Radoux, Yannick Agnan. Predicting soil neonicotinoid content in agricultural landscapes using indirect indicators, Journal of Hazardous Materials, Volume 501, 2026, 140794, ISSN 0304-3894, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2025.140794.
Conference abstracts
Yang, N., Joos de ter Beerst, V., Jacquemart, A.-L., Buyens, C., & De Vleeschouwer, C. 2022. Using pure pollen species when training a CNN to segment pollen mixtures. Proceedings of the IEEE, CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern. https://openaccess.thecvf.com/content/CVPR2022W/AgriVision/papers/Yang_Using_Pure_Pollen_Species_When_Training_a_CNN_To_Segment_CVPRW_2022_paper.pdf