Pub Date : 2024-06-16DOI: 10.26786/1920-7603(2024)791
O. Bartholomée, Jacob Björnberg, Henrik G. Smith, Liam Kendall
Intensification of forest management to increase production of biomass has resulted in considerable habitat degradation with negative impacts on insect biodiversity, including beneficial insect groups such as pollinators. Yet, little is known about how reliant forest understory plants, such as bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus), are on insect pollinators for reproduction. Here, we quantified the structure of the bilberry flower visitor community, compared the pollination effectiveness of the most common pollinators, and experimentally quantified bilberry pollination dependency. The bilberry pollinator community was comprised of several bee and hoverfly taxa. Bumblebees were the most important pollinators due to their high abundance and pollination effectiveness. Other bees, in particular, Andrena spp., and to a smaller extent, hoverflies, were also effective pollinators. Furthermore, bilberry was strongly pollen-limited, with only 40% of open-pollinated flowers setting fruit. Bilberry supports a diverse flower visitor community within hemi-boreal forests, for which it is highly dependent for reproduction. Given the ecological and cultural value of bilberry, the importance of insect pollinators for understory plants should be considered within forest management strategies.
{"title":"Pollinator effectiveness and pollination dependency of bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus) in Swedish hemi-boreal forests","authors":"O. Bartholomée, Jacob Björnberg, Henrik G. Smith, Liam Kendall","doi":"10.26786/1920-7603(2024)791","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26786/1920-7603(2024)791","url":null,"abstract":"Intensification of forest management to increase production of biomass has resulted in considerable habitat degradation with negative impacts on insect biodiversity, including beneficial insect groups such as pollinators. Yet, little is known about how reliant forest understory plants, such as bilberry (Vaccinium myrtillus), are on insect pollinators for reproduction. Here, we quantified the structure of the bilberry flower visitor community, compared the pollination effectiveness of the most common pollinators, and experimentally quantified bilberry pollination dependency. The bilberry pollinator community was comprised of several bee and hoverfly taxa. Bumblebees were the most important pollinators due to their high abundance and pollination effectiveness. Other bees, in particular, Andrena spp., and to a smaller extent, hoverflies, were also effective pollinators. Furthermore, bilberry was strongly pollen-limited, with only 40% of open-pollinated flowers setting fruit. Bilberry supports a diverse flower visitor community within hemi-boreal forests, for which it is highly dependent for reproduction. Given the ecological and cultural value of bilberry, the importance of insect pollinators for understory plants should be considered within forest management strategies.","PeriodicalId":30194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pollination Ecology","volume":"11 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141335852","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-14DOI: 10.26786/1920-7603(2024)783
M. Tissier, Cole Blair, Sarah MacKell, Lynn S. Adler, J. S. Macivor, Patrick Bergeron, Carolyn Callaghan, Geneviève Labrie, Sheila Colla, Valérie Fournier
An increasing number of wild bee species are declining or threatened with extinction worldwide. Decline has been proposed to be caused by a combination of threats, including increasing wild bee disease prevalence and pathogen spillover from managed bees that can reduce health of wild bees. Most approaches aiming at characterizing bee health, however, require sacrificing tens to hundreds of individual bees per site or species, with reports of several thousand individuals collected per study. Considering the widespread need to assess bee health, this sampling approach is not sustainable, especially for endangered populations or species. Here, we present a non-destructive protocol to collect bumble bee faeces and assess parasite loads of wild-caught individuals. The standard protocol consists of net-capturing individual bumble bees and placing them in a 10 cm (diameter) petri dish to collect faeces. This fecal screening approach is frequently used in laboratory settings, but much less in the field, which can impair conservation research. When placing bumble bees in a previously refrigerated cooler, we successfully collected faeces for 86% individuals, while the standard protocol, as used in laboratory settings, yielded 76% success in collecting faeces. We also identified cells and spores of two common gut parasites Crithidia spp. and Vairimorpha spp. in faecal samples. The faecal sampling presented here opens future avenues to assess bee pathogen loads using molecular techniques, while collected faeces could also be used to assess bee health more broadly, including bee microbiota and bee diet.
{"title":"Fecal sampling protocol to assess bumble bee health in conservation research","authors":"M. Tissier, Cole Blair, Sarah MacKell, Lynn S. Adler, J. S. Macivor, Patrick Bergeron, Carolyn Callaghan, Geneviève Labrie, Sheila Colla, Valérie Fournier","doi":"10.26786/1920-7603(2024)783","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26786/1920-7603(2024)783","url":null,"abstract":"An increasing number of wild bee species are declining or threatened with extinction worldwide. Decline has been proposed to be caused by a combination of threats, including increasing wild bee disease prevalence and pathogen spillover from managed bees that can reduce health of wild bees. Most approaches aiming at characterizing bee health, however, require sacrificing tens to hundreds of individual bees per site or species, with reports of several thousand individuals collected per study. Considering the widespread need to assess bee health, this sampling approach is not sustainable, especially for endangered populations or species. Here, we present a non-destructive protocol to collect bumble bee faeces and assess parasite loads of wild-caught individuals. The standard protocol consists of net-capturing individual bumble bees and placing them in a 10 cm (diameter) petri dish to collect faeces. This fecal screening approach is frequently used in laboratory settings, but much less in the field, which can impair conservation research. When placing bumble bees in a previously refrigerated cooler, we successfully collected faeces for 86% individuals, while the standard protocol, as used in laboratory settings, yielded 76% success in collecting faeces. We also identified cells and spores of two common gut parasites Crithidia spp. and Vairimorpha spp. in faecal samples. The faecal sampling presented here opens future avenues to assess bee pathogen loads using molecular techniques, while collected faeces could also be used to assess bee health more broadly, including bee microbiota and bee diet.","PeriodicalId":30194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pollination Ecology","volume":"50 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141338497","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-12DOI: 10.26786/1920-7603(2024)779
Caterina Massa, Janneke Hille Ris Lambers, S. Richman
Pollinator populations face growing threats from global climate change, particularly in alpine environments with rapidly rising temperatures. Understanding how bumblebees, critical alpine pollinators, respond to these temperature changes is therefore an important goal. Predicting species’ responses to climate change requires several different approaches, one of which is to compare processes at different elevations, which experience different temperature regimes. Bumblebee body size is linked to fitness through its influence on nutritional requirements and foraging capacity. It is also a highly plastic trait that depends on ecological factors such as temperature. Thus, understanding how body size varies at different elevations may help predict bumblebee fitness under climate change. We collected bumblebee workers from five species in a single growing season, at two distinct elevations in the Swiss Alps. Our study aimed to examine whether body size responses differed among species and across functional traits related to foraging and nesting. Larger body size is thought to confer an advantage under cold conditions; we therefore expected greater body size with elevation, but with species-specific relationships. Contrary to our expectation, not all species were larger at high elevations. Specifically, while two species were significantly larger at high elevation, one (Bombus terrestris) was significantly smaller at high elevation, and two showed no size differences with elevation. Additionally, interspecific variation in body size was greater at low elevations. This suggests a divergence of body size with warming, although local factors may also play a role in shaping functional traits.
{"title":"Species-specific differences in bumblebee worker body size between different elevations: Implications for pollinator community structure under climate change","authors":"Caterina Massa, Janneke Hille Ris Lambers, S. Richman","doi":"10.26786/1920-7603(2024)779","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26786/1920-7603(2024)779","url":null,"abstract":"Pollinator populations face growing threats from global climate change, particularly in alpine environments with rapidly rising temperatures. Understanding how bumblebees, critical alpine pollinators, respond to these temperature changes is therefore an important goal. Predicting species’ responses to climate change requires several different approaches, one of which is to compare processes at different elevations, which experience different temperature regimes. Bumblebee body size is linked to fitness through its influence on nutritional requirements and foraging capacity. It is also a highly plastic trait that depends on ecological factors such as temperature. Thus, understanding how body size varies at different elevations may help predict bumblebee fitness under climate change. We collected bumblebee workers from five species in a single growing season, at two distinct elevations in the Swiss Alps. Our study aimed to examine whether body size responses differed among species and across functional traits related to foraging and nesting. Larger body size is thought to confer an advantage under cold conditions; we therefore expected greater body size with elevation, but with species-specific relationships. Contrary to our expectation, not all species were larger at high elevations. Specifically, while two species were significantly larger at high elevation, one (Bombus terrestris) was significantly smaller at high elevation, and two showed no size differences with elevation. Additionally, interspecific variation in body size was greater at low elevations. This suggests a divergence of body size with warming, although local factors may also play a role in shaping functional traits.","PeriodicalId":30194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pollination Ecology","volume":"72 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141350395","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-04DOI: 10.26786/1920-7603(2024)800
Christian Pirk, Robin Crewe, Philip C. Stevenson
On 27 April 2023 the scientific community lost an inspirational and influential biologist of rare quality following the death of Professor Sue Nicolson.
{"title":"Professor Sue Nicolson 1950-2023: Sweet solutions: pollinators and their physiology","authors":"Christian Pirk, Robin Crewe, Philip C. Stevenson","doi":"10.26786/1920-7603(2024)800","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26786/1920-7603(2024)800","url":null,"abstract":"On 27 April 2023 the scientific community lost an inspirational and influential biologist of rare quality following the death of Professor Sue Nicolson.","PeriodicalId":30194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pollination Ecology","volume":"10 38","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141265383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-06-03DOI: 10.26786/1920-7603(2024)777
Aarón González‐Castro, F. Siverio
Oceanic islands are places where biological assemblages are relatively simple, as compared to the mainland. On islands, however, pollinator assemblages may to be composed of a taxonomically disparate group of organisms (e.g. insects, lizards, and birds), some of them with opportunistic nectar-feeding behaviour. Here we investigated some components of pollination effectiveness of Lotus maculatus (Fabaceae), an endangered Canary Islands endemic. In a flower exclusion experiment, we bagged flowers and compared their subsequent fruit and seed set to that of control flowers. Number of interactions with vertebrate and invertebrate flower visitors was counted and it was recorded whether interactions were legitimate (potentially pollinating) or non-legitimate (nectar robbing). Additionally, we estimated pollen loads on lizards and looked for any relationship between reproductive success of individual plants and number of visits made by the top three flower-visiting species (in terms of both frequency of occurrence at censuses and number of floral visits). Bagged flowers fruited less and with fewer seeds than control flowers. The only observed flower-visiting vertebrate was the Tenerife lizard Gallotia galloti, whose interactions were always legitimate and with around a half of captured individuals carrying pollen grains. The most frequent flower-visiting insect was the honeybee Apis mellifera followed by the solitary bee Lasioglossum arctifrons. The honeybee, however, was only a nectar robber, and the solitary bee was not an effective pollinator, but rather a pollen gatherer. Fruit set by individual plants was positively related only to frequency of visits by the lizard. Thus, the lizard seems to play a key role in the conservation management of L. maculatus.
{"title":"Flower-visiting lizards as key ecological actors for an endemic and critically endangered plant in the Canary Islands","authors":"Aarón González‐Castro, F. Siverio","doi":"10.26786/1920-7603(2024)777","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26786/1920-7603(2024)777","url":null,"abstract":"Oceanic islands are places where biological assemblages are relatively simple, as compared to the mainland. On islands, however, pollinator assemblages may to be composed of a taxonomically disparate group of organisms (e.g. insects, lizards, and birds), some of them with opportunistic nectar-feeding behaviour. Here we investigated some components of pollination effectiveness of Lotus maculatus (Fabaceae), an endangered Canary Islands endemic. In a flower exclusion experiment, we bagged flowers and compared their subsequent fruit and seed set to that of control flowers. Number of interactions with vertebrate and invertebrate flower visitors was counted and it was recorded whether interactions were legitimate (potentially pollinating) or non-legitimate (nectar robbing). Additionally, we estimated pollen loads on lizards and looked for any relationship between reproductive success of individual plants and number of visits made by the top three flower-visiting species (in terms of both frequency of occurrence at censuses and number of floral visits). Bagged flowers fruited less and with fewer seeds than control flowers. The only observed flower-visiting vertebrate was the Tenerife lizard Gallotia galloti, whose interactions were always legitimate and with around a half of captured individuals carrying pollen grains. The most frequent flower-visiting insect was the honeybee Apis mellifera followed by the solitary bee Lasioglossum arctifrons. The honeybee, however, was only a nectar robber, and the solitary bee was not an effective pollinator, but rather a pollen gatherer. Fruit set by individual plants was positively related only to frequency of visits by the lizard. Thus, the lizard seems to play a key role in the conservation management of L. maculatus.","PeriodicalId":30194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pollination Ecology","volume":"96 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141272478","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-04-03DOI: 10.26786/1920-7603(2024)793
Diane R Campbell
No abstract required for Book Review
书评无需摘要
{"title":"Review of \"Birds & Flowers: An Intimate 50 Million Year Relationship\"","authors":"Diane R Campbell","doi":"10.26786/1920-7603(2024)793","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26786/1920-7603(2024)793","url":null,"abstract":"No abstract required for Book Review","PeriodicalId":30194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pollination Ecology","volume":"116 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140748626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-30DOI: 10.26786/1920-7603(2024)758
Y. García, Benjamin Dow, Lucie Vézina, Amy L. Parachnowitsch
Considering both pollinator and herbivore pressures on plant reproductive and defensive traits is key to understanding patterns of selection for plants. However, phenotypic selection studies connecting floral traits and plant defenses with pollinator activity and herbivore damage remain rare. We used the common milkweed, Asclepias syriaca (Apocynaceae), to study phenotypic selection on attractive and defensive traits, and nectar rewards. We measured herbivore (leaf damage) and pollinator activity (pollinia movement) and quantified selection via female (pollinia insertions and fruit number) and male fitness (pollinia removals). We found selection to increase plant and inflorescence size and to decrease floral size (i.e. petal width) via female fitness. We also detected selection to increase floral but not leaf latex. The lack of selection on leaf latex was congruent with the low herbivory observed, however we also did not observe florivory in the population that would explain the advantage of more floral latex. Interestingly, we found selection on attractive traits differed via pollinia insertions and fruits initiated, suggesting that something other than pollinators was driving selection via fruit production. In contrast to female fitness, we did not find selection on any trait through male fitness, suggesting no sexual conflicting selection, at least through these proxies. Our findings reinforce the importance of the direct assessment of pollinator pressures in phenotypic selection studies before assuming pollinators as drivers of floral evolution by natural selection. Further work in southern populations closer to the centre of the species range, where herbivory and plant defense investment are higher, may help elucidate selection on attractive and defensive traits.
{"title":"Natural selection by pollinators on floral attractive and defensive traits did not translate into selection via fruits in common milkweed","authors":"Y. García, Benjamin Dow, Lucie Vézina, Amy L. Parachnowitsch","doi":"10.26786/1920-7603(2024)758","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26786/1920-7603(2024)758","url":null,"abstract":"Considering both pollinator and herbivore pressures on plant reproductive and defensive traits is key to understanding patterns of selection for plants. However, phenotypic selection studies connecting floral traits and plant defenses with pollinator activity and herbivore damage remain rare. We used the common milkweed, Asclepias syriaca (Apocynaceae), to study phenotypic selection on attractive and defensive traits, and nectar rewards. We measured herbivore (leaf damage) and pollinator activity (pollinia movement) and quantified selection via female (pollinia insertions and fruit number) and male fitness (pollinia removals). We found selection to increase plant and inflorescence size and to decrease floral size (i.e. petal width) via female fitness. We also detected selection to increase floral but not leaf latex. The lack of selection on leaf latex was congruent with the low herbivory observed, however we also did not observe florivory in the population that would explain the advantage of more floral latex. Interestingly, we found selection on attractive traits differed via pollinia insertions and fruits initiated, suggesting that something other than pollinators was driving selection via fruit production. In contrast to female fitness, we did not find selection on any trait through male fitness, suggesting no sexual conflicting selection, at least through these proxies. Our findings reinforce the importance of the direct assessment of pollinator pressures in phenotypic selection studies before assuming pollinators as drivers of floral evolution by natural selection. Further work in southern populations closer to the centre of the species range, where herbivory and plant defense investment are higher, may help elucidate selection on attractive and defensive traits.","PeriodicalId":30194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pollination Ecology","volume":"31 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140364102","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-24DOI: 10.26786/1920-7603(2024)767
Kate Tillotson-Chavez, Sarah Lukavsky, Jennifer Weber
Plant-insect interactions are a key topic in evolutionary ecology, especially in the face of anthropogenic changes which threaten to disrupt these mutualisms. An in-depth pollinator survey for species in the genus Triodanis is performed here for the first time, with sampling covering four species and spanning a large portion of their geographic ranges (i.e., four U.S. states). All species in the genus exhibit dimorphic cleistogamy with variability in allocation to open (chasmogamous) flowers among populations and taxa. The genus Triodanis, therefore, provides an opportunity for understanding possible associations between pollinator assemblies and variation in species, breeding system, and geography. To assess these relationships, we sampled four species or subspecies of Triodanis at eight field sites in four states. Sampling encompassed a broad area across the Midwestern U.S. and Texas, and across a gradient of anthropogenically disturbed habitats. We found that for species of Triodanis: 1) small bee and fly generalist pollinators showed some floral constancy during feeding bouts but did not differentiate between species, 2) pollinator community was less diverse and abundant in highly degraded habitats, 3) while allocation to open flowers varied among species and populations, we found no association between breeding system (or species) on pollinator identity or abundance. This study represents the first in-depth survey of pollinator visitors of Triodanis and serves as foundational knowledge about the natural history of this group, provides resolution for members of Campanulaceae exhibiting floral traits of generalist hosts, and important documentation of plant-insect interactions in an era of ongoing anthropogenic changes.
{"title":"Assessing Pollinator Assembly And Efficacy Across Species Ranges In The Genus Triodanis (Campanulaceae)","authors":"Kate Tillotson-Chavez, Sarah Lukavsky, Jennifer Weber","doi":"10.26786/1920-7603(2024)767","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26786/1920-7603(2024)767","url":null,"abstract":"Plant-insect interactions are a key topic in evolutionary ecology, especially in the face of anthropogenic changes which threaten to disrupt these mutualisms. An in-depth pollinator survey for species in the genus Triodanis is performed here for the first time, with sampling covering four species and spanning a large portion of their geographic ranges (i.e., four U.S. states). All species in the genus exhibit dimorphic cleistogamy with variability in allocation to open (chasmogamous) flowers among populations and taxa. The genus Triodanis, therefore, provides an opportunity for understanding possible associations between pollinator assemblies and variation in species, breeding system, and geography. To assess these relationships, we sampled four species or subspecies of Triodanis at eight field sites in four states. Sampling encompassed a broad area across the Midwestern U.S. and Texas, and across a gradient of anthropogenically disturbed habitats. We found that for species of Triodanis: 1) small bee and fly generalist pollinators showed some floral constancy during feeding bouts but did not differentiate between species, 2) pollinator community was less diverse and abundant in highly degraded habitats, 3) while allocation to open flowers varied among species and populations, we found no association between breeding system (or species) on pollinator identity or abundance. This study represents the first in-depth survey of pollinator visitors of Triodanis and serves as foundational knowledge about the natural history of this group, provides resolution for members of Campanulaceae exhibiting floral traits of generalist hosts, and important documentation of plant-insect interactions in an era of ongoing anthropogenic changes.","PeriodicalId":30194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pollination Ecology","volume":" 104","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140385930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-20DOI: 10.26786/1920-7603(2024)781
Veronica L. Yurchak, Anahi Espindola, C. Hooks
Agricultural intensification and the conversion of natural landscapes into annual cropping systems have contributed to declines in pollinator abundance and biodiversity. Increasing the abundance of flowering plants within crop fields is an often-overlooked practice that may be used to help sustain and enhance pollinator populations. In this study, the influence of red clover (Trifolium pratense) used as an interplanted living mulch on pollinator richness and visitation rates was evaluated and compared with monoculture sweet corn habitats. Treatments included sweet corn interplanted with red clover or monoculture with or without cover crop residue. Weekly visual observations of foraging floral visitors revealed that multiple species of bumblebees and butterflies, as well as honeybees frequently visited red clover flowers. Observations of visitors foraging on sweet corn tassels during pollen shed revealed distinct insect communities were attracted by sweet corn and red clover plants. Findings provided evidence that the inclusion of red clover in crop fields can increase the diversity and abundance of bees and butterflies on arable lands by serving as an important food source.
{"title":"Influence of flowering red clover on flower visitation in a sweet corn agroecosystem","authors":"Veronica L. Yurchak, Anahi Espindola, C. Hooks","doi":"10.26786/1920-7603(2024)781","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.26786/1920-7603(2024)781","url":null,"abstract":"Agricultural intensification and the conversion of natural landscapes into annual cropping systems have contributed to declines in pollinator abundance and biodiversity. Increasing the abundance of flowering plants within crop fields is an often-overlooked practice that may be used to help sustain and enhance pollinator populations. In this study, the influence of red clover (Trifolium pratense) used as an interplanted living mulch on pollinator richness and visitation rates was evaluated and compared with monoculture sweet corn habitats. Treatments included sweet corn interplanted with red clover or monoculture with or without cover crop residue. Weekly visual observations of foraging floral visitors revealed that multiple species of bumblebees and butterflies, as well as honeybees frequently visited red clover flowers. Observations of visitors foraging on sweet corn tassels during pollen shed revealed distinct insect communities were attracted by sweet corn and red clover plants. Findings provided evidence that the inclusion of red clover in crop fields can increase the diversity and abundance of bees and butterflies on arable lands by serving as an important food source.","PeriodicalId":30194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pollination Ecology","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140227939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-06DOI: 10.26786/1920-7603(2024)753
Stephanie Maher, Ruth Kelly, S. Hodge, Ellen O'Hora, S. Ruas, Roser Rotchés‐Ribalta, Alan Lee, Blanaid White, Mike Gormally, James Moran, D. Ó hUallacháin, Jane C Stout
Globally, pollinating insects face significant pressure, largely due to intensively managed agricultural systems. There has been considerable focus on the provision of resources for pollinators in agricultural landscapes, but without understanding how existing farmland habitats affect pollinators there is a risk these conservation actions could fail. The aim of this study was to explore the relationships between the quantity, diversity, and quality of on-farm habitats with pollinator communities. To meet this aim, pollinator, floral and habitat features were assessed at twenty-nine sites, encompassing both livestock and crop systems, at a range of farming intensities, in two regions of Ireland. Results showed that the three main taxonomic pollinator groups (hoverflies, social bees, and solitary bees) were inconsistent in their responses to habitat and environmental variables. Hoverflies were negatively associated with farms with increasing amounts of linear feature and fewer drainage ditches, whereas bumblebees were positively associated with crop farms and the number of grassy margins, drainage ditches and hedgerows at a site. Solitary bees were negatively associated with crop farms and positively associated with high floral species richness. At a species level, community analysis showed that within taxonomic groups, individual species responded differently to environmental variables. This study demonstrates that different farm types and habitat features impact pollinator groups differently. One-size does not fit all, thus on-farm conservation actions should be designed with knowledge of taxon-specific responses to maximise benefits. The quantity and diversity of essential habitats are important along with the quality of those features in terms of their capacity to provide sufficient resources for pollinators.
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