Abstract: The diversity of bees that can be found in cities highlights the importance of urban environments for wild native bee conservation. Planting understorey vegetation is one way of providing more floral resources to support urban bee communities and the ecosystem services they provide. However, the influence of vegetation origin, landscape context and other local characteristics of understorey plantings on urban bees is unclear. Furthermore, research on the effects of bee species traits in the urban context is lacking. We sampled the bee communities at 32 exotic and indigenous understorey plantings around inner Melbourne, Australia. For each site, we recorded mulch cover and measured features of the landscape context in 200 m buffers. We then used a trait-based method of statistical analysis to determine how bee traits may be mediating species responses. Indigenous plantings were found to attract a more diverse community of bees compared to exotic plantings, with particular plant species, such as Wahlenbergia spp, highly effective at attracting a diversity of bees. Many native bees responded positively to Myrtaceae tree abundance in the landscape, but none responded to impervious surface. Only one species responded to mulch cover and its response was negative. Bee traits were not found to influence species responses to any of the investigated variables, potentially because I had a small number of bee species that exhibited similar responses to environmental variables and were predominately members of the genus Lasioglossum. Our results suggests that growing indigenous understorey plants and generally increasing native vegetation in the landscape can have a positive influence on wild native bee communities in urban areas and therefore contribute to the conservation of bee fauna.
