Does pollinator conservation promote environmental co-benefits?

Abstract

The decline of pollinators is an urgent issue that has gained global attention and many initiatives have been implemented to promote conservation actions. However, interventions aimed at safeguarding pollinators can have ripple effects on multiple ecosystem services that are equally important for human well-being. In this work, we investigated whether environmental conditions favouring pollinators are positively associated with the provision of multiple ecosystem services across three different habitats. We selected 96 sites belonging to three habitat types with different roles in supporting pollinators, i.e., crop field margins, semi-natural patches, and urban green areas. We sampled wild pollinators and seven ecosystem services, which included provisioning, cultural, and regulatory services, using which we calculated two ecosystem multi-functionality metrics. Semi-natural patches and crop field margins exhibited both the highest diversity of pollinators and ecosystem multi-functionality, i.e., habitats that supported pollinators also delivered a higher number of environmental co-benefits. However, increasing habitat quality for pollinators did not result in increased multi-functionality, indicating that single ESs exhibited non-linear responses. Therefore, improving local conditions for wild pollinators did not enhance ecosystem multi-functionality, while specific habitat types have been shown to have the potential to improve pollinator diversity while generating multiple environmental co-benefits.