Evaluating the taxa that provide shared pollination services across multiple crops and regions

Bryony K Willcox,Malou Jean-Meyzonnier,Linley Jesson,Brad G Howlett,Romina Rader,Lindsey Kirkland,Victoria Potdevin,Brian Cutting,Andrew J Robson,Lisa Evans,Manu E Saunders

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-49535-w

Abstract

Many pollinator species visit multiple crops in multiple regions, yet we know little about their pollination service provisioning at local and regional scales. We investigated the floral visitors (n = 13,200), their effectiveness (n = 1718 single visits) and response to landscape composition across three crops avocado, mango and macadamia within a single growing region (1 year), a single crop (3 years) and across different growing regions in multiple years. In total, eight wild visitor groups were shared across all three crops. The network was dominated by three pollinators, two bees (Apis mellifera and Tetragonula spp.) and a fly, Stomorhina discolor. The visitation network for the three crops was relatively generalised but with the addition of pollen deposition data, specialisation increased. Sixteen managed and wild taxa were consistently present across three years in avocado, yet their contribution to annual network structure varied. Node specialisation (d’) analyses indicated many individual orchard sites across each of the networks were significantly more specialised compared to that predicted by null models, suggesting the presence of site-specific factors driving these patterns. Identifying the taxa shared across multiple crops, regions and years will facilitate the development of specific pollinator management strategies to optimize crop pollination services in horticultural systems.

Highlights

Wild and managed pollinator taxa provide and stabilise pollination services throughout agricultural and natural systems[1,2,3]
Quantification of the connections between plants and pollinators[36,37,38], species and habitats[39], and crops and pollinators[28] is urgently required in order to devise strategies that support the in-situ management of local, wild pollinator taxa across multiple crops and regions. This would provide a focus for management efforts on local, wild pollinator taxa that already exist in a given landscape, to support or augment managed honey bee services, without importing new exotic taxa and their associated pests, parasites and disease[1,2,3,12,40,41,42]
Using multi-crop, multi-year and multi-region crop-pollinator networks we demonstrate here that shared wild and managed pollinator taxa visit multiple crops across several regions

Summary

Introduction

Wild and managed pollinator taxa (including bees, flies, beetles, butterflies and moths) provide and stabilise pollination services throughout agricultural and natural systems[1,2,3]. Quantification of the connections between plants and pollinators[36,37,38], species and habitats[39], and crops and pollinators[28] is urgently required in order to devise strategies that support the in-situ management of local, wild pollinator taxa across multiple crops and regions This would provide a focus for management efforts on local, wild pollinator taxa that already exist in a given landscape, to support or augment managed honey bee services, without importing new exotic taxa and their associated pests, parasites and disease[1,2,3,12,40,41,42]

Methods

Results

Conclusion