Nutritionally rich wildflower patches adjacent to nutritionally deficient crops significantly increase pollination services

Abstract

The balance between nutrition and energy needs has an important impact on the spatial distribution of foraging animals. In the present paper, we focus on the case of bumble bees moving around a landscape in search of pollen (to meet nutritional needs) and nectar (to meet energy needs). Depending on the colony demands, bumble bees can concentrate their foraging effort towards either pollen rich flower species or nectar rich flower species. This behaviour allows us to establish a strategy – a spatial landscape design – which can maximize the pollination services of crops that are nutritionally deficient for pollinators by adding nutritionally rich wildflower patches. To do this, we formulate a mathematical partial integro-differential equation model to predict the spatial distribution of foraging bumble bees. We use our model to predict the location, composition and quantity of the wildflower patches adjacent to crop fields that will be most beneficial for crop pollination services. Our results show that relatively small quantities of wildflowers in specific locations with respect to the nest sites and the crop can have a positive impact on pollination services when the composition (i.e., pollen to nectar ratio) of the added wildflowers is significantly different from the composition of the existing crop flowers.