Biodiversity of pollinators in agricultural landscapes and the role of weather and conservation management

Myriads of insect species pollinate our economic plants for free and temperate grasslands are important ecosystems for the survival of native pollinators.

Our study was conducted to compare pollinator biodiversity indices between protected and agricultural grasslands in the context of changing weather.

We studied pollinators within the Polabí lowland (Czech Republic) in 2022. We focused on the species richness and abundance of Lepidoptera and Coleoptera and the population density of the Honey bee (Apis mellifera mellifera). Protected areas and agricultural grasslands were compared using two factors: (i) the influence of immediate weather at 126 sites and (ii) the influence of seasonal weather at 30 sites.

We found that the most influential characteristic was floral abundance, followed by immediate weather, conservation management and seasonal weather. Management primarily influenced pollinator species diversity. Floral abundance intensity affected insects across groups. We observed a very conclusive effect of immediate weather, especially temperature and wind. Seasonal weather only influenced butterfly species richness.

Notably, immediate weather and floral abundance were much more influential than the influence of management. Equally striking was the low influence of seasonal weather. It appears that the immediate weather and floral abundance strongly influenced pollinators. Therefore, weather can influence the accurate assessment of the impact of management in the landscapes.

We conclude that weather strongly influences insect pollinators, but conservation management remains a key measure for supporting pollinators. The good news is that pollinators can find habitat outside of protected areas thanks to complementation in the form of sufficient plant flowering time.