Bees increase seed set of wild plants while the proportion of arable land has a variable effect on pollination in European agricultural landscapes

Herbertsson, L. and Potts, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2045-980X (2021) Bees increase seed set of wild plants while the proportion of arable land has a variable effect on pollination in European agricultural landscapes. Plant Ecology and Evolution, 154 (3). pp. 341-350. ISSN 2032-3921 doi: 10.5091/plecevo.2021.1884

Abstract/Summary

Background and aims – Agricultural intensification and loss of farmland heterogeneity have contributed to population declines of wild bees and other pollinators, which may have caused subsequent declines in insect-pollinated wild plants. Material and methods – Using data from 37 studies on 22 pollinator-dependent wild plant species across Europe, we investigated whether flower visitation and seed set of insect-pollinated plants decline with an increasing proportion of arable land within 1 km. Key results – Seed set increased with increasing flower visitation by bees, most of which were wild bees, but not with increasing flower visitation by other insects. Increasing proportion of arable land had a strongly variable effect on seed set and flower visitation by bees across studies. Conclusion – Factors such as landscape configuration, local habitat quality, and temporally changing resource availability (e.g. due to mass-flowering crops or honey bee hives) could have modified the effect of arable land on pollination. While our results highlight that the persistence of wild bees is crucial to maintain plant diversity, we also show that pollen limitation due to declining bee populations in homogenized agricultural landscapes is not a universal driver causing parallel losses of bees and insect-pollinated plants.

Additional Information	For the full list of authors see https://doi.org/10.5091/plecevo.2021.1884
Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/102660
Identification Number/DOI	10.5091/plecevo.2021.1884
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Agriculture, Policy and Development > Department of Sustainable Land Management > Centre for Agri-environmental Research (CAER)
Additional Information	For the full list of authors see https://doi.org/10.5091/plecevo.2021.1884
Publisher	Meise Botanic Garden
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