Abstract
There is compelling evidence that more diverse ecosystems deliver greater benefits to people, and these ecosystem services have become a key argument for biodiversity conservation. However, it is unclear how much biodiversity is needed to deliver ecosystem services in a cost-effective way. Here we show that, while the contribution of wild bees to crop production is significant, service delivery is restricted to a limited subset of all known bee species. Across crops, years and biogeographical regions, crop-visiting wild bee communities are dominated by a small number of common species, and threatened species are rarely observed on crops. Dominant crop pollinators persist under agricultural expansion and many are easily enhanced by simple conservation measures, suggesting that cost-effective management strategies to promote crop pollination should target a different set of species than management strategies to promote threatened bees. Conserving the biological diversity of bees therefore requires more than just ecosystem-service-based arguments.
Highlights
There is compelling evidence that more diverse ecosystems deliver greater benefits to people, and these ecosystem services have become a key argument for biodiversity conservation
Because real-world communities are almost invariably dominated by a small number of species[15,16] that often respond readily to conservation management[17], we hypothesize that in real-world landscapes (1) the majority of the services is provided by a relatively small number of species; (2) that these species are generally common, and that threatened species rarely contribute to present ecosystem service delivery; and (3) that the most important ecosystem-service-providing species can be enhanced by simple management actions that are insufficient to support threatened species
A limited subset of all known bee species provides the majority of pollination services because, across different crops, years and large biogeographical regions, crop-visiting bee communities are dominated by a small number of common species and rarely contain regionally threatened species
Summary
There is compelling evidence that more diverse ecosystems deliver greater benefits to people, and these ecosystem services have become a key argument for biodiversity conservation. Because real-world communities are almost invariably dominated by a small number of species[15,16] that often respond readily to conservation management[17], we hypothesize that in real-world landscapes (1) the majority of the services is provided by a relatively small number of species; (2) that these species are generally common, and that threatened species rarely contribute to present ecosystem service delivery; and (3) that the most important ecosystem-service-providing species can be enhanced by simple management actions that are insufficient to support threatened species. Conservation of the biological diversity of bees should be motivated by immediate benefits from ecosystem services and by the full richness of arguments for conservation
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