Philippa Kaur

The numbers are heading in the wrong direction. If the world continues on its current track, it will fall well short of achieving almost all of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that the United Nations set to protect the environment and end poverty and inequality by 2030.The projected grade for:Eliminating hunger: F.Ensuring healthy lives for all: F.Protecting and sustainably using ocean resources: F.The trends were there before 2020, but then problems increased with the COVID-19 pandemic, war in Ukraine and the worsening effects of climate change. The world is in “a new uncertainty complex”, says economist Pedro Conceição, lead author of the United Nations Human Development Report.One measure of this is the drastic change in the Human Development Index (HDI), which combines educational outcomes, income and life expectancy into a single composite indicator. After 2019, the index has fallen for two successive years for the first time since its creation in 1990. “I don’t think this is a one-off, or a blip. I think this could be a new reality,” Conceição says.UN secretary-general António Guterres is worried. “We need an urgent rescue effort for the SDGs,” he wrote in the foreword to the latest progress report, published in July. Over the past year, Guterres and the heads of big UN agencies, such as the Statistics Division and the UN Development Programme, have been assessing what’s gone wrong and what needs to be done. They’re converging on the idea that it’s time to stop using gross domestic product (GDP) as the world’s main measure of prosperity, and to complement it with a dashboard of indicators, possibly ones linked to the SDGs. If this happens, it would be the biggest shift in how economies are measured since nations first started using GDP in 1953, almost 70 years ago1.
Get the Sustainable Development Goals back on track
Guterres’s is the latest in a crescendo of voices calling for GDP to be dropped as the world’s primary go-to indicator, and for a dashboard of metrics instead. In 2008, then French president Nicolas Sarkozy endorsed such a call from a team of economists, including Nobel laureates Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz.And in August, the White House announced a 15-year plan to develop a new summary statistic that would show how changes to natural assets — the natural wealth on which economies depend — affect GDP. The idea, according to the project’s main architect, economist Eli Fenichel at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, is to help society to determine whether today’s consumption is being accomplished without compromising the future opportunities that nature provides. “GDP only gives a partial and — for many common uses — an incomplete, picture of economic progress,” Fenichel says.The fact that Guterres has made this a priority, amid so many major crises, is a sign that “going beyond GDP has been picked up at the highest level”, says Stefan Schweinfest, the director of the UN Statistics Division, based in New York City.Grappling with growth GDP is a measure of economic activity that has ended up becoming the world’s main index for economic progress. By a commonly used definition, it is the numerical sum of countries’ consumer and government spending and their business investments, adding the value of exports minus imports. When governments and businesses talk, as they regularly do, about boosting ‘economic growth’, what they mean is boosting GDP.But GDP is more than a growth target. It is also the benchmark for how countries measure themselves against each other (see ‘Growth gaps’). The United States is the world’s largest economy, as measured by GDP. China, currently second, is on a path to overtake it.

Source: World Bank

GDP also matters greatly to politicians. When India leapfrogged the United Kingdom to become the world’s fifth largest economy earlier this year, it made headline news. Last month, China reportedly delayed publication of its latest (and less-than-flattering) quarterly GDP figures so they would not appear during the Communist party’s national congress, at which Xi Jinping took a third term as president.“GDP is without question the superstar of indicators,” says Rutger Hoekstra, a researcher who studies sustainability metrics at Leiden University in the Netherlands and author of Replacing GDP by 2030.The problem with using GDP as a proxy for prosperity, says Hoekstra, is that it doesn’t reflect equally important indicators that have been heading in the opposite direction. Global GDP has increased exponentially since the Industrial Revolution, but this has coincided with high levels of income and wealth inequality, according to data compiled by the economist Thomas Piketty at the World Inequality Lab in Paris2. This is not a coincidence. Back in the 1950s, when countries pivoted economies to maximizing GDP, they knew it would mean “making the labourer produce more than he is allowed to consume”, as Pakistan’s then chief economist Mahbub ul Haq graphically put it3. “It is well to recognize that economic growth is a brutal, sordid process.”What is more, to boost GDP, nations need to indulge in environmentally damaging behaviour. In his 2021 report, entitled Our Common Agenda, Guterres writes: “Absurdly, GDP rises when there is overfishing, cutting of forests or burning of fossil fuels. We are destroying nature, but we count it as an increase in wealth.”This tension is apparent when it comes to the SDGs. GDP growth is associated with several SDG targets; in fact SDG 8 is about boosting growth. But GDP growth “can also come at the expense of progress towards other goals”, such as climate and biodiversity action, says environmental economist Pushpam Kumar, who directs a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) project, called the Inclusive Wealth Report, to measure sustainability and inequality. The latest report will be published next month.The one-number problemThe present effort by Guterres and his colleagues is not the first time policymakers have tried to improve on GDP. In 1990, a group of economists led by ul Haq and Sen designed the HDI. They were motivated in part by frustration that their countries’ often impressive growth rates masked more-dismal quality-of-life data, such as life expectancy or education.More recently, environment ministers have found that GDP-boosting priorities have got in the way of their SDG efforts. Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, the former environment minister of Costa Rica, says he urged his finance and economics colleagues to take account of the impact of economic development on water, soils, forests and fish. But they were concerned about possible reductions in GDP calculations, says Rodríguez, now chief executive of the Global Environment Facility, based in Washington DC. Costa Rica didn’t want to be the first country to implement such a change only to possibly see itself slide down the growth rankings as a result.

Industrial production, such as the work at this automobile plant in Japan, goes into GDP calculations.Credit: Akio Kon/Bloomberg via Getty

China’s environmental policymakers were confronted with a similar response when, in 2006, they tried to implement a plan called Green GDP4. Local authorities were asked to measure the economic cost of pollution and environmental damage, and offset that against their economic growth targets. “They panicked and the project was shelved,” says Vic Li, a political economist at the Education University of Hong Kong, who has studied the episode. “Reducing GDP would have affected their performance reviews, which needed GDP to always increase,” he says.It’s been a similar story in Italy. In 2019, then research minister Lorenzo Fioramonti helped to establish an agency, Well-being Italy, attached to the prime minister’s office. It was intended to test economic policy decisions against sustainability targets. “It was an uphill battle because the various economic ministries did not see this as a priority,” says Fioramonti, now an economist at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK.Revising the rulesSo, can the latest attempt to complement GDP succeed? Economists and national statisticians who help to determine GDP’s rules say it will be a struggle.Guterres and his colleagues are proposing to include 10–20 indicators alongside GDP. But that’s a tough sell because countries see a lot of value (not to mention ease of use) in relying on one number. And GDP’s great success is that countries produce their own figures, according to internationally agreed rules, which allow for cross-comparison over time. “It’s not a metric compiled by Washington DC, Beijing or London,” says Schweinfest.At the same time, GDP is not something that can just be turned on or off. In each country, tracking the data that goes into calculating GDP is an industrial-scale operation involving government data as well as surveys of households and businesses.
Are there limits to economic growth? It’s time to call time on a 50-year argument
China, Costa Rica and Italy’s experiences suggest that an environment-adjusted GDP might be accepted only if every country signs up to the concept at the same time. In theory, this could happen at the point when GDP’s rules — known as the System of National Accounts — are being reviewed, an event that takes place roughly once every 15 years.The next revision to the rules is under way and is due to be completed in 2025. The final decision will be made by the UN Statistical Commission, a group of chief statisticians from different nations, together with the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the network of the world’s wealthy countries.Because the UN oversees this process, Guterres has some influence over the questions that the review is asking. As part of their research, national statisticians are exploring how to measure well-being and sustainability, along with improving the way the digital economy is valued. Economists Diane Coyle and Annabel Manley, both at the University of Cambridge, say that technology and data companies, which make up seven out of the global top ten firms by stock-market capitalization, are probably undervalued in national accounts5.However, according to Peter van de Ven, a former OECD statistician who is the lead editor of the GDP revision effort, some aspects of digital-economy valuation, along with putting a value on the environment, are unlikely to make it into a revised GDP formula, and will instead be part of the report’s supplementary data tables. One of the reasons, he says, is that national statisticians have not agreed on a valuation methodology for the environment. Nor is there agreement on how to value digital services such as when people use search engines or social-media accounts that (like the environment) are not bought and sold for money.Yet other economists, including Fenichel, say that there are well-established methods that economists use to value both digital and environmental goods and services. One way involves asking people what they would be willing to pay to keep or use something that might otherwise be free, such as a forest or an Internet search engine. Another method involves asking what people would be willing to accept in exchange for losing something otherwise free. Management scientists Erik Brynjolfsson and Avinash Collis, both at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, did an experiment6 in which they computed the value of social media by paying people to give up using it.The value of natureEconomist Gretchen Daily at Stanford University in California says it’s not true that valuing the environment would make economies look smaller. It all depends on what you value. Daily is among the principal investigators of a project called Gross Ecosystem Product (GEP) that has been trialled across China and is now set to be replicated in other countries. GEP adds together the value of different kinds of ecosystem goods and services, such as agricultural products, water, carbon sequestration and recreational sites. The researchers found7 that in the Chinese province of Qinghai, the region’s total GEP exceeded its GDP.Although past efforts to avoid using GDP have stalled, this time could be different. It’s likely, as van de Ven says, that national statisticians will not add nature (or indeed the value of social media and Internet search) to the GDP formula. But the pressure for change is greater than at any time in the past.GDP is like a technical standard, such as the voltage of household electricity or driving on the left, says Coyle. “So if you want to switch to the right, you need to align people on the same approach. Everyone needs to agree.” More

Laboratory experimentsCulturingThe marine cyanobacterium Trichodesmium erythraeum IMS101 was obtained from the National Center for Marine Algae and Microbiota (Maine, USA) and was grown in Aquil-tricho medium prepared with 0.22 µm-filtered and microwave-sterilized oligotrophic South China Sea surface water6. The medium was enriched with various concentrations of chelexed and filter-sterilized NaH2PO4 as where indicated, and filter-sterilized vitamins and trace metals buffered with 20 µM EDTA6. The cultures were unialgal, and although they were not axenic, sterile trace metal clean techniques were applied for culturing and experimental manipulations. T. erythraeum was pre-adapted to low P condition by semi-continuously culturing at 0.5 μM PO43− and at two pCO2 levels (400 and 750 µatm) for more than one year. To start the chemostat culture, three replicates per treatment were grown in 1-L Nalgene® magnetic culture vessels (Nalgene Nunc International, Rochester, NY, USA), in which the cultures were continuously mixed by bubbling with humidified and 0.22 µm-filtered CO2–air mixtures and stirring using a suspended magnetic stir bar. The reservoirs contained Aquil-tricho medium with 1.2 μM NaH2PO4, which was delivered to the culture vessels using a peristaltic pump (Masterflex® L/S®, USA) at the dilution rate of 0.2 d−1. In all experiments, cultures were grown at ;27 °C and ~80 μmol photons m−2 s−1 (14 h:10 h light–dark cycle) in an AL-41L4 algae chamber (Percival). The concentration of Chlorophyll a (Chla) was monitored daily in the middle of the photoperiod as an indicator of biomass. When the Chla concentration remained constant for more than one generation, the system was considered to have reached steady-state, and was maintained for at least another four generations prior to sampling for further analysis.Carbonate chemistry manipulationpCO2/pH of seawater media in the culture vessels and in the reservoir was controlled by continuously bubbling with humidified and 0.22 µm-filtered CO2-air mixtures generated by CO2 mixers (Ruihua Instrument & Equipment Ltd.). During the experimental period, the pHT (pH on the total scale) of media was monitored daily using a spectrophotometric method46. The dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) of media was analyzed by acidification and subsequent quantification of released CO2 with a CO2 analyzer (LI 7000, Apollo SciTech). Calculations of alkalinity and pCO2 were made using the CO2Sys program47, based on measurements of pHT and DIC, and the carbonate chemistry of the experiments are shown in Supplementary Table 1.Chla concentration and cell density and sizeChla concentration was measured daily following Hong et al.6. Briefly, T. erythraeum was filtered onto 3 μm polycarbonate membrane filters (Millipore), followed by heating at 65 °C for 6 min in 90% (vol/vol) methanol. After extraction the filter was removed and cell debris were spun down via centrifugation (5 min at 20,000×g) before spectrophotometric analysis. Cell density and the average cell length and width were determined at regular intervals when the chemostat cultures reached steady-state using ImageJ software. Photographs of Trichodesmium were taken using a camera (Canon DS126281, Japan) connected with an inverted microscope (Olympus CKX41, Japan). Total number and length of filaments in 1 mL of culture were measured, and the cell number of ~20 filaments was counted. The average length of cells was obtained by dividing the total length of the 20 filaments by their total cell number. The cell density of the culture was then calculated by dividing the total length of filaments in 1 mL culture by the average cell length. The average cell width was determined by measuring the width of around 1000 cells in each treatment.Elemental compositionTo determine particulate organic C (POC) and N (PON), at the end of the chemostat culturing T. erythraeum cells were collected on pre-combusted 25 mm GF/F filters (Whatman) and stored at −80 °C. Prior to analysis, the filters were dried overnight at 60 °C, treated with fuming HCl for 6 h to remove all inorganic carbon, and dried overnight again at 60 °C. After being packed in tin cups, the samples were subsequently analyzed on a PerkinElmer Series II CHNS/O Analyzer 2400.Particulate organic P (POP) was measured following Solorzano et al.48. Cells were filtered on pre-combusted 25 mm GF/F filters and rinsed twice with 2 mL of 0.17 M Na2SO4. The filters were then placed in combusted glass bottles with the addition of 2 mL of 0.017 M MgSO4, and subsequently evaporated to dryness at 95 °C and baked at 450 °C for 2 h. After cooling, 5 mL of 0.2 M HCl was added to each bottle. The bottle was then tightly capped and heated at 80 °C for 30 min, after which 5 mL Milli-Q H2O was added. Dissolved phosphate from the digested POP sample was measured colorimetrically following the standard phosphomolybdenum blue method.C uptake and N2 fixation ratesRates of short-term C uptake were determined at the end of the chemostat culturing. 100 µM NaH14CO3 (PerkinElmer) was added to 50 mL of cultures in the middle of the photoperiod, which was then incubated for 20 min under the growth conditions. After incubation, the samples were collected onto 3 μm polycarbonate membrane filters (Millipore), which were then washed with 0.22 µm-filtered oligotrophic seawater and placed on the bottom of scintillation vials. The filters were acidified to remove inorganic C by adding 500 µL of 2% HCl. The radioactivity was determined using a Tri-Carb 2800TR Liquid Scintillation Analyzer (PerkinElmer). Rates of N2 fixation (nitrogenase activity) were measured in the middle of the photoperiod for 2 h by the acetylene reduction assay49, using a ratio of 4:1 to convert ethylene production to N2 fixation.Soluble reactive phosphate (SRP) analysisWhen the chemostat cultures reached a steady-state, SRP concentrations in the culture vessels were measured at regular intervals, using the classic phosphomolybdenum blue (PMB) method with an additional step to enrich PMB on an Oasis HLB cartridge50. Briefly, 100 mL of GF/F filtered medium sample was fortified with 2 mL of ascorbic acid (100 g L−1) and 2 mL of mixed reagent (MR, the mixture of 100 mL of 130 g L−1 ammonium molybdate tetrahydrate, 100 mL of 3.5 g L−1 potassium antimony tartrate, and 300 mL of 1:1 diluted H2SO4), and then mixed completely. After standing at room temperature for 5 min, the solution was loaded onto a preconditioned Oasis HLB cartridge (3 cm3/60 mg, P/N: WAT094226, Waters Corp.) via a peristaltic pump, and then 1 mL eluent solution (0.2 M NaOH) was added to elute the sample into a cuvette, to which 0.06 mL of MR and 0.03 mL of ascorbic acid solution was added to fully develop PMB. Finally, the absorbance of PMB was measured at 700 nm using a spectrophotometer.Alkaline phosphatase (AP) activityAP activities were measured in the middle of the photoperiod using p-nitrophenylphosphate (pNPP) as a substrate51. Briefly, 5 mL of culture was incubated with 250 μL of 10 mM pNPP, 675 μL of Tris-glycine buffer (50 mM, pH 8.5) and 67.5 μL of 1 mM MgCl2 for 2 h under growth conditions. The absorbance of formed p-nitrophenol (pNP) was measured at 410 nm using a spectrophotometer.PolyP analysisAt the end of the chemostat culturing, T. erythraeum cells were filtered in the middle of the photoperiod onto 3 μm polycarbonate membrane filters (Millipore), flash frozen in liquid nitrogen, and stored at −80 °C until analysis. PolyP was quantified fluorometrically following Martin and Van Mooy22 and Martin et al.23. Briefly, samples were re-suspended in 1 mL Tris buffer (pH 7.0), sonicated for 30 s, immersed in boiling water for 5 min, sonicated for another 30 s, and then digested by 10 U DNase (Takara), RNase (2.5 U RNase A + 100 U RNase T1) (Invitrogen) and 20 μl of 20 mg mL−1 proteinase K at 37 °C for 30 min. After centrifugation for 5 min at 14,000×g, the supernatant was diluted with Tris buffer according to the range of standards curve, stained with 60 μL of 100 μM 4, 6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI) per 500 μL of samples, incubated for 7 min and then vortexed. The samples were then loaded onto a black 96-well plate and the absorption of fluorescence at an excitation wavelength of 415 nm and emission wavelength of 550 nm was measured using a PerkinElmer EnSpire® Multimode Plate Reader. PolyP standard (sodium phosphate glass Type 45) was purchased from Sigma-Aldrich. This method gives a relative measure of polyP concentration23 that is expressed as femto-equivalents of the standard per cell (feq cell−1).Cellular ATP measurementCellular ATP contents were determined when the chemostat cultures reached a steady state. T. erythraeum cells were collected in the middle of the photoperiod using an ATP Assay Kit (Beyotime Biotechnology, Shanghai, China) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Briefly, the sample was lysed and centrifuged, and the supernatant (100 μL) was mixed with ATP detection working reagent (100 μL) and loaded onto a black 96-well plate. The luminescence was measured using a PerkinElmer EnSpire® Multimode Plate Reader.Intracellular metabolites measurementsNAD(H), NADP(H), and Glu were measured at the end of the chemostat culturing, using the liquid chromatography-tandem quadrupole mass spectrometry (LC–MS/MS) method modified from Luo et al.52. Briefly, T. erythraeum cells were gently filtered at the middle of photoperiod onto 3 μm polycarbonate membrane filters (Millipore), rapidly suspended in −80 °C precooled methanol-water (60%, v/v) mixture. After being kept in −80 °C freezer for 30 min, the sample was sonicated for 30 s, centrifuged at 12,000×g and 4 °C for 5 min, and the supernatant was filtered through a 0.2 μm filter (Jinteng®, China) and stored at −80 °C for further LC–MS/MS analysis.A 2.0 × 50 mm Phenomenex® Gemini 5u C18 110 Å column (particle size 5.2 µm, Phenomenex, USA) was used for the analysis. The mobile phases consisted of two solvents: mobile phase A (10 mM tributylamine aqueous solution, pH 4.95 with 15 mM acetic acid) and mobile phase B (100% methanol), which were delivered using an Agilent 1290 UPLC binary pump (Agilent Technologies, Palo Alto, CA, USA) at a flow rate of 200 µL min−1, with a linear gradient program implemented as follows: hold isocratic at 0% B (0–2 min); linear gradient from 0% to 85% B (2–28 min); hold isocratic at 0% B (28–34 min). The effluent from the LC column was delivered to an Agilent 6490 triple-quadrupole mass spectrometer, equipped with an electrospray ionization source operating in negative-ion mode. NAD, NADH, NADP, NADPH, and Glu were monitored in the multiple reaction monitoring modes with the transition events at m/z 662.3  > 540, 664.3  > 79, 742  > 620, 744  > 79, and 147  > 84, respectively.RNA extraction, library preparation, and sequencingAt the end of the chemostat culturing, T. erythraeum was collected in the middle of the photoperiod by filtering onto 3 μm polycarbonate membrane filters (Millipore), flash frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at −80 °C until extraction. Total RNA was extracted using TRIzol® Reagent (Invitrogen) combined with a physical cell disruption approach by glass beads according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Genomic DNA was removed thoroughly by treating it with RNAase-free DNase I (Takara, Japan). Ribosomal RNA was removed from a total amount of 3 µg RNA using Ribo-Zero rRNA Removal kit (Illumina, USA). Subsequently, cDNA libraries were generated according to the manufacturer’s protocol of NEBNext® UltraTM Directional RNA Library Prep Kit for Illumina® (NEB, USA). The quality of the library was assessed on the Agilent Bioanalyzer 2100 system (Agilent Technologies, CA, USA). Libraries were sequenced on an Illumina Hiseq 2500 platform, yielding 136-bp paired-end reads.RNA-Seq bioinformaticsClean reads were obtained from raw data by removing reads containing adapter, ploy-N and low-quality read. Qualified sequences were mapped to the Trichodesmium erythraeum IMS101 genome (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/NC_008312.1) by using Bowtie2-2.2.353. Differential expression analysis for high/low pCO2 with P limitation was performed using the DESeq2 R package54. The resulting p-values were adjusted using Benjamini and Hochberg’s approach for controlling the false discovery rate. Genes with an adjusted p-value  More

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Here we assessed how species and functional diversity components of wild bee assemblages responded to increasing urbanization levels, using a large dataset encompassing recent surveys gathering 838 sampling sites located in natural, semi-natural and urban habitats of France, Belgium and Switzerland.We found a weak, but significant negative effect of the proportion of impervious surfaces in a 500 m radius around each site on local species richness of bee communities. Thus, sites with high soil sealing tended to host less species than those with low soil sealing. However, this trend was not observed when using human population density as an urbanization metric: sites with denser human populations hosted on average the same number of species as less densely populated sites.Concerning taxonomic homogenization of communities, we did not record any effects of urbanization, both in terms of impervious surfaces or human population density.Analyses of occurrence rates of bee functional traits revealed significant differences between poorly and highly urbanized communities, for both urbanization metrics. With higher human population density, probabilities of occurrence of above-ground nesters, generalist and small species increased, and a higher probability of occurrence of above-ground nesters, generalists and social bees were recorded in areas with high soil sealing.Therefore, we found overall consistent results linking urbanization and wild bees taxonomic as well as functional trait diversity, even though analyses stemmed from a combination of many independent studies covering a broad range of anthropized and natural aeras from western Europe. This further highlights the greater generalizability of those ecological trends throughout European temperate biomes compared to other studies typically focusing on a single city and its immediate vicinity.Two complementary metrics of urbanization intensityTo quantify urbanization, we used two variables: soil sealing12,16,19,36 in a 500 m radius, and the mean human population density, also in a 500 m radius, the latter variable being used only recently to assess pollinator responses to urban environments37,38. These two variables return different but complementary information concerning urban environments. Indeed, if soil sealing gives an idea as to how human activities impact land use, human population density helps distinguish between very dense urban areas and very impervious areas with lower densities of buildings. High human population density areas are usually associated with high levels of soil sealing, but the contrary is not true. Similarly, areas with low soil sealing are usually associated with low human population densities, but again, the opposite is not always true. Therefore, we found it informative to consider both variables when analyzing the response of wild bee assemblages to urbanization.Note that some specific habitat types, for example business districts, are exceptions to the rule. These places are indeed very densely urbanized, but with very low population density. However, no inventories have been carried out in these places, and thus will not be a problem for our study.Response of bee community species richness to urbanizationOne of our goals was to position this study in the context of the contrasting findings on pollinator communities and urbanization. Whereas no consistent trend is reported in literature15, our large dataset reveals that high soil sealing is detrimental to wild bee species richness. This offers a unified view of a trend that has been unequally evidenced from studies focusing on a single or few cities only. High proportions of soil sealing reduce the availability of nesting sites for ground-nesting bee species. This may in turn lower the species diversity of local assemblages, by filtering out ground-nesting bees, leaving mainly cavity-nesting bees. Furthermore, high levels of soil sealing can lead to depletion of floral resources, of extreme importance for bees, especially in highly disturbed environments such as cities39,40. Note that several previous studies report the opposite, with high local species richness of wild bees in urbanized habitats. However, these positive effects are often associated with intermediate levels of urbanization15,16, where private gardens and other green spaces may supply abundant floral resources, in conjunction with intermediate levels of soil sealing16,17,18,19,20,24.On the contrary, there was no significant relationship between local species richness and human population density. Recently, two recent studies have used this metric to analyze how urbanization impacts local diversity of bee, hoverfly37 or butterfly38 assemblages, and both studies report negative impacts of human population density. However, high levels of human population density do not necessarily correlate with low availability of floral resources or nesting sites for pollinating insects. Several studies show that densely-populated urban environments may be adequate habitats for pollinating insects, due to alternative management practices of urban green space41 and the year-round availability of ornamental flowers42,43. Here, the absence of a clear effect of human population density on local bee species richness masks a change in the species composition of the communities, as shown by the increasing proportion of cavity nesters, compared with ground nesters. Indeed, despite the lower availability of nesting resources for ground-nesters, cavity-nesters take over in high-density areas, where more concrete structures and buildings are present15, thus they may compensate for the loss of ground-nesting bee species.Wild bee community homogenization and urbanizationWe did not observe any relationship between mean pairwise β-diversity and the two metrics of urbanization. This result contrasts with those of Banaszak-Cibicka and Żmihorski (2020)44 who found more homogeneous wild bee communities in urban environments compared to non-urban ones. Similar results have been reported for bees, with homogenization of urban pollinator communities compared to rural ones28,45. Biotic homogenization in urban environments has also been reported for other taxa, for example birds46.In our study, when considering urbanization levels, either in terms of soil sealing or human population density, urban wild bee communities are not more or less taxonomically homogeneous than non-urban ones. It is important to note that this result does not imply that urban and non-urban wild bee communities are similar, but that the homogenization of wild bee communities is constant throughout the urbanization gradient. In other words, urban communities are as dissimilar as non-urban ones. Here, the β diversity values are quite high (ranging from 0.68 to 0.96), emphasizing that even urban areas have quite dissimilar communities when compared to each other. This high level of dissimilarity among wild bee communities in urban environments can be explained by the large range of biogeographical regions encompassed in our dataset (Fig. 5), as each of these regions harbors a specific wild bee fauna34.Local factors in cities might also explain these high levels of dissimilarity. We know for example that green space connectivity has effects on species richness, with more wild bee species and abundance in cities with more connected green spaces47. Another local explanation might come from contrasting green space management practices among cities. Not all cities have the same policies, and urban green space management is crucial to the establishment and sustainability of diverse pollinator communities14,15,48. Thus, we expect more dissimilar wild bee communities among cities with differing green space layout and management.Figure 5Grouped sampling sites (n = 532) in France, Belgium and Switzerland, with the biogeographical regions. In total, 238 sites belong to the Continental region, 178 to the Atlantic, 106 to de Mediterranean and 10 to the Alpine. This figure was generated using QGIS software, v3.10.13 (https://www.qgis.org/).Full size imageFunctional responses of bee communities to urbanizationSeveral studies have already shown trends on how urban areas filter wild bee communities based on their functional traits (see30 and49 for reviews). However, as for taxonomic diversity, it is often difficult to identify clear variation patterns50. Using our large dataset, we could identify typical wild bee functional traits that are favored in urban environments, thus informing on the average functional profiles of wild bee species that may thrive in cities. We found urban wild bees in general to be typically above-ground nesters and generalists, while different trends were established for their body size and sociality, depending on the considered urbanization metric (Fig. 6).Figure 6Summary picture of an urban bee community, compared to a non-urban one. This figure was generated using Inkscape v1.2 (https://inkscape.org/).Full size imageNesting habitsAbove-ground nesting species were more frequent with increasing urbanization than below-ground nesting ones, and this result was recorded with both urbanization metrics.This result is consistent with what was previously reported in the literature16,49,51,52. Indeed, cities, with high proportions of impervious surfaces and buildings, offer fewer nesting habitats to ground-nesting species15, nesting sites becoming a limiting factor39. On the other hand, above-ground nesters can do well in cities with the presence of man-made structures, depending on their ability to use them and on their availability53.The presence of green areas in cities can help ground-nesting bee species by offering more nesting opportunities and resources17. Several studies highlight the importance of parks and gardens in supporting bee biodiversity in cities12,18,31,54, which otherwise are constraining environments due to soil sealing.DietGeneralist species were more frequent in more urbanized sites than specialist ones, and this was recorded for both urbanization metrics.This is in accordance with what was previously found in the literature32,50,51,52,54,55, as specialist bee species depend on the presence of their host plants to complete their life-cycle, which are often scarce due to the rarefaction of native flowering resources. As one can find many exotic flowers in cities, especially in residential gardens and urban parks56, we expect to detect less oligolectic bee species in densely urbanized habitats57.Notwithstanding, Banaszak-Cibicka et al. (2018)20 found more oligolectic species in urban parks of Poznań (Poland) compared to a national park. Thus, urban areas are not always depleted of specialist species, and well-managed parks with preserved native floral resources can obviously support specialist wild bee species in cities58.Additionally, it is important to emphasize that the presence of an exotic plant species may concomitantly support an associated specialist bee species. In Poland, for instance, the spread of Bryonia dioica in urban environments also brought the Andrena florea wild bee species, specialized on this plant59.Body sizeWe recorded contrasting effects of the two urbanization metrics on wild bee body size: small species were more frequent in relation to higher human population density compared to large species, but we found no difference with the proportion of impervious surfaces. Contrasting impacts of urbanization on bee body size are also reported in the literature, with some studies finding little to no effect32,50, and some finding that urbanization often favors smaller bee species12,30,60. Bee body size is of particular importance because it is related to the foraging range of individuals61,62. In fragmented habitats, such as dense urban environments, distances between suitable nesting and feeding habitats may select for smaller species that can remain on small green spaces and rarely need to commute across several green spaces. Furthermore, small bees may be favored given that they need fewer floral resources than large bees, even though large bees can fly further62.This might also explain the difference in the response of bee body size to the two urbanization metric results. In densely populated cities, it is harder to fly between suitable habitats, even for larger bees, as higher buildings and structures may act as barriers to their movement. Indeed, it has been recently shown that the 3D structure of cities impacts wild bee community composition63. Thus, being able to fly further might no longer be an advantage, and larger bees, requiring more floral resources than smaller ones, might be selected against. On the contrary, very impervious areas do not always host high building density (for example, as in the case of parking lots), thus making it easier for large wild bees to fly between bare soil areas.Densely populated areas might also exhibit warmer temperatures due to the urban heat island effect, and this could, in turn, result in the selection of smaller individuals, as we know that in cities, higher temperature results in smaller body sizes64.SocialityWe also recorded contrasting effects of the two urbanization metrics on sociality: social species were more frequent in relation to higher proportion of impervious surface compared to solitary ones, but no effect was recorded with human population density. This is in agreement with a recent literature review that reports on no consensus concerning the response of this trait to urbanization30.However, some urban habitats are shown to host more social species than rural habitats20,32, which may be linked to better reproductive success in cities compared to rural habitats such as agricultural environments65, an explanation that is consistent with our results on the soil sealing—sociality relationship.Conclusion, limits & future directionsOverall, our findings suggest that urban environment filters wild bee communities based on their functional traits. Our results also underscore different impacts of urbanization metrics on local species diversity, with a significant negative impact of soil sealing. On the contrary, both soil sealing and human population densities create strong functional filtering of trait assemblages.These results are particularly relevant since they arise from a range of independent studies, thus providing a general view on the wild bee communities in urban environments from western Europe. Since this study covers different biogeographical zones, it further underlines its applicability to other temperate countries. We therefore expect similar patterns to shape wild bee communities in urbanized areas from other temperate regions, but further confirmatory studies would be welcome.Our study also delivers a clear message concerning wild bee communities in urban environments. Urban environments cannot compare with non-urban ones in terms of species richness and trait diversities of bee communities. However, simple management practices of urban green spaces, such as differentiated management, or simply low management66, may help in maintaining this diversity. Indeed, not all green spaces are equally valuable in supporting wild bees, and pollinator assemblages in general49. For example, it has been shown that pollinator richness was positively influenced by green space size, but also by management measures such as mowing67. Increasing the quantity of floral resources and their spatio-temporal availability and diversity40,68 could also help conserving pollinator communities and pollination function in cities69, as long as these resources are native or attractive to pollinators.We can then hypothesize that changes in managing practices could help increase functional diversity of bees in cities, with specialist and ground-nesting species being found more frequently in these low-managed urban areas.Finally, if managing urban green space is of great importance to protect biodiversity in cities, it is crucial to involve all stakeholders, especially residents70 to achieve efficient and socially-accepted measures.In the future, it will be important to consider intra-city landscape variation, and see how urban characteristics might influence taxonomic and trait diversity. This will surely allow us to better understand the dynamics shaping wild bee communities in urban environments. More

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Soil sampling and determination of soil physical properties and synoptic dataSoil samples were taken from two coastal deserts in the north and south of Iran. Details of their geographic distribution and eco-physiological characterization were shown in Table 1. A total of 2 kg of soil samples were collected from 2 distinct sampling locations ranging in depth from 0 to 30 cm, and the samples were dried for 3 days at room temperature and in the dark before sifting. The soil samples were sieved using a 2 mm sieve to remove stones and other inert material before being stored in zip-top bags. Table 1 lists the soil samples’ physical characteristics, including soil texture (sand 2–0.02 mm; silt 0.02–0.002 mm; clay 0.002 mm), pH, and the proportions of clay, silt, and sand. Synoptic data from the past 10 years (2009–2019), including the average annual temperature, maximum temperature, minimum temperature, average rainfall, average annual wind speed, and maximum wind speed, were obtained from the I.R.OF Iran Meteor (http://www.irimo.ir/far/index.php).Bacterial isolation and effect of manure-based medium on their growthAccording to Chen et al. 2005, the soil-borne bacteria were isolated using direct-spreading method. For this essence soil samples were treated through a series of dilutions. The mixture of 1 g of soil sample was vortexed for 1 min after being suspended in 2 ml of sterile physiological saline (0.9% w/v NaCl). The mixture was then diluted serially (typically 10–1 to 10–7), and level 100 μl of the diluted soil samples were scattered on the surface of solidified plates using glass spreaders. The samples were then incubated for 1 to 3 days at 30 °C in an inverted posture without light. For bacterial isolation, we used eleven culture media including Nutrient Agar (NA), Nutrient Agar plus MnSO4 (NA + MnSO4), LB, Moller Hinton Agar (MHA), Acidithiobacillus (APH) medium, Violet Red Bile Lactose (VRB) agar medium, GYM Streptomyces medium, DPM medium, Azospirillum medium, Azotobacter medium and Manure based medium (MB).To prepare MB medium, dry animal manure and distilled water (1:6 w/v) were combined to create MB medium, which was then let to sit at room temperature for 16 h. The resulting mixture was then centrifuged at 5000 rcf for 30 min after being filtered twice. The next stage involved adding Hoagland salts (10% w/v) to the final extract, adjusting the medium’s pH to 5.8 ± 0.02, and autoclaving it for 20 min at 121 °C and 1.5 kPa. Before sterilization, bacteriological agar (1.5 w/v) was employed as a gelling agent to solidify the medium.After bacterial isolation on NA, NA+ MnSO4, LB, MHA, APH, VRB, GYM, DPM, and Azospibrillum media, the growth of all isolates was evaluated on an MB medium. To investigate isolates biomass in the same condition, we elected MB medium. First, the bacteria were grown in the liquid form of NA, NA+ MnSO4, LB, MHA, APH, VRB, GYM, DPM, and Azospirillum and Azotobacter media at 30 °C for 48 h, then 103 cells of each isolate were transferred to 48 wells plates containing MB medium, and plates were incubated at 30 °C for 10 h. Then, the growth of bacteria was read at an optical density (OD) of 630 nm 10 h after inoculation, the experiment was performed with three replicates. In the following step, CFU/ml equivalent to each OD was obtained by inoculating the uniform amount of liquid culture of the isolates on the solid form of MB medium at 30 °C for 16 h.Phenotypic characterization and biochemical identification of bacterial isolatesThe morphological analysis of the cell shape, colony (i.e., shape, color, and size), and biochemical tests were used to identify the bacterial isolates. Biochemical characterization was carried out By using gram staining, KOH27, oxidase, and catalase tests. For this essence, following Bartholomew’s method28, gram staining of bacteria was studied 48 h after inoculation on MHA, and the non-staining KOH method was used to confirm the results. Using 0.5 ml of a 10% hydrogen peroxide solution, a catalase test was conducted, and the generation of gas bubbles was monitored. Using biochemical oxidase discs, the oxidative activity of 27 isolates was investigated.Effect of abiotic stresses on bacterial isolatesTo determine the effect of abiotic stresses on isolates alkaline (MH medium with pH  10), salinity (MH medium supplemented with the final concentration of 100 mM NaCl), osmotic [MH medium supplemented with 25% polyethylene glycol (PEG) Mn6000], and thermal stresses (MH medium incubated at 15 °C for cold stress and 60 °C for heat stress) were screened. For all experiments, the incubation period was 15 h, and plates were kept in a dark condition.MALDI-TOF MS identification of isolatesSoil bacterial isolates were subcultured twice on MHA and incubated at 30 °C for 24 h before MALDI-TOF MS measurement. Then ∼0.1 µg of cell material was directly transferred from a bacterial colony or smear of colonies to a MALDI target spot. After drying at laboratory temperature, sample spots were overlaid with 1 μl of matrix solution (10 mg/mL a-cyano-4-hydroxycinnamic acid in 50% acetonitrile and 2.5% trifluoroacetic acid) and each measurement was carried out in triplicate (technical replicates). MS analysis was performed on an Autoflex MALDI-TOF mass spectrometer (Bruker Daltonics, Germany) using Flex Control 3.4 software (Bruker Daltonics, Germany). Calibration was carried out with the use of the Bacterial Test Standard (Bruker Daltonics, Germany). Soil isolates with a valid MALDI-TOF MS score of 2 were undoubtedly assigned to the genus/species level. For bacterial classification and identification, BioTyper 3.1 software (Bruker Daltonics, Germany) equipped with MBT 6903 MPS Library (released in April 2016), the MALDI Biotyper Preprocessing Standard Method, and the MALDI Biotyper MSP Identification Standard Method adjusted by the manufacturer (Bruker Daltonics, Germany) were used. Only the highest score value of all mass spectra belonging to individual cultures (biological and technical replicates) was recorded25. The score between 2.3 and 3.00 shows highly probable species-level identification and between 2.0 and 2.29 represents genus-level identification and probable species level of identification. A score between 1.7 and 1.99 indicates probable genus-level identification29.Effects of bacterial isolates on plants growthThe Seed and Plant Improvement Institute of Karaj (Karaj, Iran; http://www.spii.ir/homepage.aspx?site=DouranPortal&tabid=1&lang=faIR) provided the maize, canola, and wheat seeds (Zea mays. Var Kosha; Brassica napus Var Nima; Triticum aestivum Var Kalate). In greenhouse trials, 2 × 103 cells/seed of soil-borne isolates cultured in a manure-based medium were inoculated to maize, canola, and wheat plants. During the studies, sand that had been acid washed and autoclaved was used for planting. For three weeks, seedlings were kept under a 16/8 h day/night photoperiod with a 25 °C temperature. Three replications of a complete randomized block design were used for the colonization experiment’s treatments. Under the bacterial treatments, measurements were made of the plant growth parameters including shoot dry biomass (mg), root dry biomass (mg), shoot length (cm), root length (cm), shoot density (mg/cm), root density (mg/cm), and shoot/root weight (mg). Samples were dried at 60 °C for three days to measure dry biomass.Statistical analysisStatistical analysis was done by R software (version 4.1.3). One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine the significance of the experiment, and Fisher’s protected Least Significant Difference (LSD) test with a P-value of 0.01 was performed to separate the means. Furthermore, PCA analysis has been carried out based on the Clustvis package and the SVD imputation approach.Ethics approval and consent to participateAll authors agree to the ethics and consent to participate in this article and declare that this submission follows the policies of Scientific Reports. Accordingly, the material is the author’s original work, which has not been previously published elsewhere. The paper is not being considered for publication elsewhere. All authors have been personally and actively involved in substantial work leading to the paper and will take public responsibility for its content.Ethics for research involving plantsAll authors confirmed that experimental research and field studies on plants, including receiving the seeds from the Seed and Plant Improvement Institute of Karaj, complied with relevant institutional, national, and international guidelines and legislation. Furthermore, methods were conducted according to the relevant guidelines and regulations. More

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