Abstract
One of the greatest challenges in sustainable agricultural production is managing ecosystem services, such as pollination, in ways that maximize crop yields. Most efforts to increase services by wild pollinators focus on management of natural habitats surrounding farms or non-crop habitats within farms. However, mass flowering crops create resource pulses that may be important determinants of pollinator dynamics. Mass bloom attracts pollinators and it is unclear how this affects the pollination and yields of other co-blooming crops. We investigated the effects of mass flowering apple on the pollinator community and yield of co-blooming strawberry on farms spanning a gradient in cover of apple orchards in the landscape. The effect of mass flowering apple on strawberry was dependent on the stage of apple bloom. During early and peak apple bloom, pollinator abundance and yield were reduced in landscapes with high cover of apple orchards. Following peak apple bloom, pollinator abundance was greater on farms with high apple cover and corresponded with increased yields on these farms. Spatial and temporal overlap between mass flowering and co-blooming crops alters the strength and direction of these dynamics and suggests that yields can be optimized by designing agricultural systems that avoid competition while maximizing facilitation.
Highlights
Following mass bloom[18,19], for solitary, univoltine bees[20] for which the bloom of a single crop may represent nearly the entire span of their adult foraging activity
Because our estimates of community overlap are based on collections from geographically separated locations, they represent a conservative measure of the overlap in apple and strawberry pollinators that is likely to occur within a farm
Similar to the effects observed on the pollinator community, we found the effects of apple mass flowering on strawberry fruit weight differed with the stage of apple bloom (Table 2)
Summary
Following mass bloom[18,19], for solitary, univoltine bees[20] for which the bloom of a single crop may represent nearly the entire span of their adult foraging activity. Little is known about competitive or facilitative interactions between pollinator dependent crops with respect to pollinators and pollinator services; we expect that these interactions are ubiquitous in agricultural landscapes They only require that crops have overlap in their pollinator community though they may bloom in different seasons[21] or even in different years[20]. In this study we investigate the potential for pollinator mediated competition or facilitation in two economically important crops: apple (Malus domestica), a mass flowering crop, and strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa Duch.) in central New York, USA. In this region apple and strawberry have a staggered but overlapping bloom period. The high potential for community overlap in pollinators between apple and strawberry make these two crops an ideal study system in which to understand the potential for pollinator-mediated interactions among crops
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