Insect pollinators: linking research and policy (original) (raw)
Related papers
Insect pollination constitutes an ecosystem service of global importance, providing significant economic and aesthetic benefits as well as cultural value to human society, alongside vital ecological processes in terrestrial ecosystems. It is therefore important to understand how insect pollinator populations and communities respond to rapidly changing environments if we are to maintain healthy and effective pollinator services. This chapter considers the importance of conserving pollinator diversity to maintain a suite of functional traits and provide a diverse set of pollinator services. We explore how we can better understand and mitigate the factors that threaten insect pollinator richness, placing our discussion within the context of populations in predominantly agricultural landscapes in addition to urban environments. We highlight a selection of important evidence gaps, with a number of complementary research steps that can be taken to better understand: (i) the stability of pollinator communities in different landscapes in order to provide diverse pollinator services; (ii) how we can study the drivers of population change to mitigate the effects and support stable sources of pollinator services and (iii) how we can manage habitats in complex landscapes to support insect pollinators and provide sustainable pollinator services for the future. We advocate a collaborative effort to gain higher quality abundance data to understand the stability of pollinator populations and predict future trends. In addition, for effective mitigation strategies to be adopted, researchers need to conduct rigorous field testing of outcomes under different landscape settings, acknowledge the needs of end-users when developing research proposals and consider effective methods of knowledge transfer to ensure effective uptake of actions.
Threats to an ecosystem service: pressures on pollinators
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 2013
Pollinators provide a crucial ecosystem service by improving or stabilizing yields of approximately 75% of crop-plant species globally ). The cultivated area of insect-dependent crops has increased world-
GUEST EDITORIAL: The interplay of pollinator diversity, pollination services and landscape changest
Pollinators are a functional group with high relevance for ensuring cross-pollination in wild plant populations and yields in major crops. Both pollinator declines and losses of pollination services have been identified in the context of habitat destruction and land use intensification. 2. This editorial synthesizes and links the findings presented in seven papers in this Special Profile, focusing on pollinator diversity and plant-pollinator interactions in natural habitats and agricultural landscapes.
2020
Habitat loss and fragmentation are major drivers of global pollinator declines, yet even after recent unprecedented periods of anthropogenic land-use intensification the amount of habitat needed to support pollinators remains unknown. Here we use comprehensive datasets to determine the extent and amount of habitat needed. Safeguarding wild bee communities in a Canadian landscape requires 11.6-16.7% land-cover from a diverse range of habitats (~1.8-3.6x current policy guidelines), irrespective of whether conservation aims are enhancing species richness or abundance. Sensitive habitats, like tallgrass woodlands and wetlands, were important predictors of bee biodiversity. Conservation strategies that underestimate the extent of habitat, spatial scale and specific habitat needs of functional guilds are unlikely to protect bee communities and the essential pollination services they provide to crops and wild plants. One sentence summary-Safeguarding wild bee communities requires 11.6-16.7% of the area in common North American landscapes to provide targeted habitat prescriptions for different functional guilds over a variety of spatial scales. Main text-Human-induced land-use changes are driving unprecedented widespread and increasing global biodiversity losses (1, 2). These alarming declines in biodiversity result in the degradation of many essential ecosystem services and functions (3, 4), including pollination. Indeed, wild bees and the pollination services they provide to crops and wild plants are experiencing global declines in response to intensive anthropogenic landscape changes, climate change, parasites and diseases, competition from invasive species, and rising agrochemical usage (5, 6). The Sustainable Development Agenda set globally agreed targets to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure peace and prosperity for all by 2030 (7). However, less than a decade from this deadline little apparent progress has been made towards many of these key targets, including the need to 'ensure the conservation, restoration and sustainable use of terrestrial and inland freshwater ecosystems and their services' (Goal 15.1) (7). Efforts to slow, or even reverse global pollinator declines have led many countries to initiate conservation strategies in agricultural areas (8-10), urban environments (11), and other sensitive lands to mitigate the loss of vital pollinators and the ecosystem services they provide (5, 12). Selection and implementation of specific conservation strategies will strongly depend on conservation priorities and may differ substantially if the goal is to: (1) enhance pollination by pollinators visiting particular crops (13, 14), (2) maintain wider pollinator biodiversity (13) or (3) specifically target the recovery of pollinator species-at-risk (15). Most research to date has focused on adding and restoring pollinator habitat, typically by planting more abundant and diverse floral mixtures as food sources (16, 17), and by providing or enhancing nesting sites and suitable larval host plants (18). Evidence suggests these strategies can be highly effective at
Insect Conservation and Diversity, 2013
1. In response to evidence of insect pollinator declines, organisations in many sectors, including the food and farming industry, are investing in pollinator conservation. They are keen to ensure their efforts use the best available science. 2. We convened a group of 32 'conservation practitioners' with an active interest in pollinators and 16 insect pollinator scientists. The conservation practitioners include representatives from UK industry (including retail), environmental non-government organisations and nature conservation agencies. 4 3. We collaboratively developed a long list of 246 knowledge needs relating to conservation of wild insect pollinators in the UK. We refined and selected the most important knowledge needs, through a three-stage process of voting and scoring, including discussions of each need at a workshop.