Abstract
Loss of suitable seminatural habitats and homogenization of crop types have led to the population decline of pollinating insects in farmland. As these insects support crop production, many practical efforts aim to sustain pollinator diversity which is especially challenging in intensively managed and homogeneous farmland. However, there are ongoing changes of the farmland toward its multifunctionality that includes, for example, wind farm development. Windmills are often built within crops; thus, we examined if the noncropped area around windmills can be valuable habitats for wild plants and pollinating insects: bees, butterflies, and flies. Species richness, abundances, and species diversity index of plants and pollinators around windmills were similar to those found in grassland patches (a typical habitat for these insects) and higher than in the adjacent crops. Pollinator diversity index and species richness at windmills increased with the distance to the nearest grassland patch and windmill. The population sizes of pollinating insects were also positively associated with plant diversity. Particular groups of pollinators showed specific habitat associations: bees occurred mostly at windmills, butterflies were highly associated with grasslands, while flies occurred in a similar number at windmill and on grasslands. Since windmills are frequently built within extensive homogeneous fields, thus, they introduce pollination services into the interior of cropped areas, contrary to field margins, road verges, or seminatural grasslands. Thus, although the development of wind farms has various negative environmental consequences, they can be alleviated by the increase of the local population size and diversity of wild plants and pollinating insects at windmills.
Highlights
Farmland is an important habitat for many taxa (Pimentel et al 1992; Söderström et al 2001; Scherr and McNeely 2008; Rosin et al 2016a)
Since there were no differences in pollinator diversity and abundance between two types of crops (pollinators H′ diversity index: generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) F1, 35 = 0.064, p = 0.802; total pollinators species GLMM F1, 37 = 0.021, p = 0.885; total pollinators abundance GLMM F1, 37 = 0.646, p = 0.421) nor did we find differences in pollinators diversity and abundance between fields adjacent to windmill and fields bordering with grasslands, we treated these fields as one habitat type hereafter referred to as Bfield^
We demonstrated that windmill sites supported equal species richness, diversity, and abundance of pollinating insects as their typical habitat—seminatural grassland patches and Marginal habitats such as balks, fallows, ditches, road verges, and field borders may enable maintaining species diversity when there is a lack of natural habitats
Summary
Farmland is an important habitat for many taxa (Pimentel et al 1992; Söderström et al 2001; Scherr and McNeely 2008; Rosin et al 2016a). The intensification of farming has led to habitat fragmentation, habitat loss, and pollution of farmland and, in a consequence, to collapse or diminishing of ecosystem services (Green et al 2005; Stoate et al 2009). One of the most threatened ecosystem service is pollination of plants, which plays a key role in the food production and sustaining wild plant species diversity (Potts et al 2010; Sekercioglu et al 2010; Baude et al 2016). The most recognized groups of pollinators are bees, but there are other taxa such as flies, butterflies, birds, or bats that may contribute to pollination substantially (Rader et al 2016).
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