Larval food composition of four wild bee species in five European cities

Urbanization poses threats and opportunities for the biodiversity of wild bees. A main gap relates to the food preferences of wild bees in urban ecosystems, which usually harbour large numbers of plant species, particularly at the larval stage. This data sets describes the larval food of four wild bee species (i.e. Chelostoma florisomne, Hylaeus communis, Osmica bicornis and Osmia cornuta) and three genera (i.e. Chelostoma sp., Hylaeus sp, and Osmia sp.) common in urban areas in five different European cities (i.e. Antwerp, Paris, Poznan, Tartu and Zurich). This data results from a European-level study aimed at understanding the effects of urbanization on biodiversity across different cities and citiscapes, and a Swiss project aimed at understanding the effects of urban ecosystems in wild bee feeding behaviour. Wild bees were sampled using standardized trap-nests in 80 sites (32 in Zurich and 12 in each of the remaining cities), selected following a double gradient of available habitat at local and landscape scales. Larval pollen was obtained from the bee nests and identified using DNA metabarconding. The data provides the plant composition at the species or genus level of the different bee nests of the studied species in the studied sites of the five European cities. For Hylaeus communis, this is the first study in reporting larval food composition.