Affiliation:
1. Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry University of Helsinki Helsinki Finland
2. Faculty of Life Sciences University of Bristol Bristol UK
3. Department of Ecology Swedish Agricultural University (SLU) Uppsala Sweden
Abstract
Abstract
Despite the importance of insect pollination to produce marketable fruits, insect pollination management is limited by insufficient knowledge about key crop pollinator species. This lack of knowledge is due in part to (1) the extensive labour involved in collecting direct observations of pollen transport, (2) the variability of insect assemblages over space and time and (3) the possibility that pollinators may need access to wild plants as well as crop floral resources.
We address these problems using strawberry in the United Kingdom as a case study. First, we compare two proxies for estimating pollinator importance: flower visits and pollen transport. Pollen‐transport data might provide a closer approximation of pollination service, but visitation data are less time‐consuming to collect. Second, we identify insect parameters that are associated with high importance as pollinators, estimated using each of the proxies above. Third, we estimated insects' use of wild plants as well as the strawberry crop.
Overall, pollinator importances estimated based on easier‐to‐collect visitation data were strongly correlated with importances estimated based on pollen loads. Both frameworks suggest that bees (Apis and Bombus) and hoverflies (Eristalis) are likely to be key pollinators of strawberries, although visitation data underestimate the importance of bees.
Moving beyond species identities, abundant, relatively specialised insects with long active periods are likely to provide more pollination services.
Most insects visiting strawberry plants also carried pollen from wild plants, suggesting that pollinators need diverse floral resources.
Identifying essential pollinators or pollinator parameters based on visitation data will reach the same general conclusions as those using pollen transport data, at least in monoculture crop systems. Managers may be able to enhance pollination service by preserving habitats surrounding crop fields to complement pollinators' diets and provide habitats for diverse life stages of wild pollinators.
Funder
Academy of Finland
Natural Environment Research Council
National Science Foundation
Sveriges Lantbruksuniversitet
Subject
Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law,Nature and Landscape Conservation,Ecology,Global and Planetary Change
Cited by
4 articles.
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