Abstract
AbstractPopulation declines of pollinators constitute a major concern for the fate of biodiversity and associated ecosystem services in a context of global change. Massive declines of pollinator populations driven by habitat loss, pollution, and climate change have been reported, whose consequences at community and ecosystem levels remain elusive. We conducted a mathematical modeling and computer simulation study to assess the dynamic consequences of pollinator declines for the biodiversity of plants and pollinators. Specifically, we evaluated the effects of increased mortality and decreased carrying capacity of specialist vs. generalist and effective vs. ineffective pollinators visiting specialist vs. generalist plants on long‐term community biomass and species persistence. Our results reveal that increased larval mortality and increased competition for space among larvae had the greatest impacts on the decline of pollinator diversity. In contrast, the largest sustained decreases in pollinator biomass were driven by increased adult mortality in spite of a small increase in pollinator species persistence. Decreased pollinator diversity led in turn to decreased plant diversity. Attacking pollinators with high degree and connected mostly to low‐degree plants produced the greatest losses of plant diversity. Pollinator effectiveness had no noticeable effect on persistence. Our results illuminate our understanding of the consequences of pollinator declines for the maintenance of biodiversity.
Highlights
Many plant species depend on pollinators for reproduction
A transient simulation was run until the system reached an asymptotic oscillatory behavior, which can be considered analogous to the steady behavior in classical autonomous dynamic models
Our results reveal that among the tested drivers for pollinator decline, increased larval mortality and increased competition for space among larvae had the greatest impacts on the decline of pollinator diversity
Summary
Many plant species depend on pollinators for reproduction. A large proportion of plants in natural ecosystems worldwide are pollinated by animals, mostly insects, and would not be able to reproduce without them (Kearns et al 1998, Ollerton et al 2011). (Kearns et al 1998, Vanbergen 2013, SanchezBayo and Wyckhuys 2019) These declines constitute a major concern for the fate of biodiversity in a context of global change. Given the high dependence of many plant species on animal pollination, these declines are expected to affect the pollination and reproduction of many plant species in both natural and agro-ecosystems (Kearns et al 1998, Vanbergen 2013, Potts et al 2016)
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