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103 results for “insect pollinators”

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dryad36/100

Pollinator efficiency of avocado (Persea americana) flower insect visitors

Pollination services from insects are important for higher yield and better fruit quality in avocado (Persea americana Mill.). Measuring pollinator effectiveness is significant for capturing the relative contributions of different insect taxa to pollination services and for identification of the most important pollinators of this globally important crop. In the present study, we tested pollinator efficiency of avocado in Kenya based on pollen deposition after single visits of flowers by different pollinator species and visitation frequency. We monitored the pollination frequency during the flowering period replicated across six farms. Three trees were selected per farm, each with five flower panicles. Out of the 14 observed insect flower visitor species, pollen deposition efficiency was highest in the Western honey bee (Apis mellifera L.), followed by the hover fly species (Phytomia incisa W.). These two species had both the highest pollen deposition and pollen grain loads on their bodies. Furthermore, A. mellifera was the most frequent avocado flower visitor followed by Diptera except hoverflies. Our results imply that A. mellifera can be managed to achieve adequate pollination services for avocado, particularly in areas lacking efficient wild pollinators.

opencc-zeroJul 2022View details →

dryad36/100

Agricultural margins could enhance landscape connectivity for pollinating insects across the Central Valley of California, U.S.A.

One of the defining features of the Anthropocene is eroding ecosystem services as a function of decreases in biodiversity and overall reductions in the abundance of once-common organisms, including many insects that play innumerable roles in natural communities and agricultural systems that support human society. It is now clear that the preservation of insects cannot rely solely on the legal protection of natural areas far removed from the densest areas of human habitation. Instead, a critical challenge moving forward is to intelligently manage areas that include intensively farmed landscapes, such as the Central Valley of California. Here we attempt to meet this challenge with a tool for modeling landscape connectivity for insects (with pollinators in particular in mind) that builds on available information including lethality of pesticides and expert opinion on insect movement. Despite the massive fragmentation of the Central Valley, we find that connectivity is possible, especially utilizing the restoration or improvement of agricultural margins which (in their summed-area) exceed natural areas. Finally, we highlight steps moving forward and the great many knowledge gaps that could be addressed in the field to improve future iterations of our modeling approach.

opencc-zeroJan 2023View details →

dryad36/100

Data from: Sex-specific selection patterns in a dioecious insect-pollinated plant

This is an experimental research project which aims at understanding how natural and sexual selection gradients (and differentials) vary according to sex in a dioecious insect-pollinated species, Silene dioica. Moreover, Bateman gradients are estimated using two sampling methods for genotyped offspring acquisition. The following dataset was obtained on the whole flowering season and includes: <ul> <li>individual information (population cohort etc.)</li> <li>18 floral traits (using mean for repeated measures)</li> <li>female reproductive success</li> <li>male reproductive success (clean results from CERVUS, with and without paternity share)</li> <li>male and female mating success (estimating with different sampling methods)</li> </ul>

opencc-zeroApr 2023View details →

dryad36/100

Data from: What makes a good pollinator? Abundant and specialized insects with long flight periods transport the most strawberry pollen

<ol> <li>Despite the importance of insect pollination to produce marketable fruits, insect pollination management is limited by insufficient knowledge about key crop pollinator species. This lack of knowledge is due in part to: 1) the extensive labour involved in collecting direct observations of pollen-transport, 2) the variability of insect assemblages over space and time, and 3) the possibility that pollinators may need access to wild plants as well as crop floral resources.</li> <li>We address these problems using strawberry in the UK as a case study. First, we compare two proxies for estimating pollinator importance: flower visits and pollen transport. Pollen-transport data might provide a closer approximation of pollination service, but visitation data are less time-consuming to collect. Second, we identify insect parameters that are associated with high importance as pollinators, estimated using each of the proxies above. Third, we estimated insects' use of wild plants as well as the strawberry crop.</li> <li>Overall, pollinator importances estimated based on easier-to-collect visitation data were strongly correlated with importances estimated based on pollen loads. Both frameworks suggest that bees Apis and Bombus and hoverflies Eristalis are likely to be key pollinators of strawberries, although visitation data underestimate the importance of bees.</li> <li>Moving beyond species identities, abundant, relatively specialised insects with long active periods are likely to provide more pollination service. </li> <li>Most insects visiting strawberry plants also carried pollen from wild plants, suggesting that pollinators need diverse floral resources.</li> <li>Identifying essential pollinators or pollinator parameters based on visitation data will reach the same general conclusions as those using pollen transport data, at least in monoculture crop systems. Managers may be able to enhance pollination service by preserving habitats surrounding crop fields to complement pollinators' diets and provide habitats for diverse life stages of wild pollinators.</li> </ol>

opencc-zeroJun 2023View details →

dryad36/100

Data from: Direct and indirect effects of urbanization, pesticides, and wild insect pollinators on mango yield

<ol> <li>Expanding cities increasingly encroach fertile farmlands, questioning the viability of maintaining agriculture within and around them. Yet, our knowledge on how urbanization influences pollinator communities and the provision of pollination services to crops is limited, especially for the urbanization hotspots of the Global South. </li> <li>Mango (Mangifera indica) is one of the most important fruit crops in tropical countries. To analyze the dependency of mango on its main insect pollinators, and the direct and indirect effects of urbanization and insecticides on pollinator abundance and mango yield, we conducted a pollinator exclusion experiment and sampled flower visitors on 16 mango farms spread across rural-urban landscapes in Bengaluru, a South Indian megacity. </li> <li>We found that allowing flowers access to ants and flying visitors (bees, hoverflies, non-syrphid flies), dramatically increased mango yield by 350%, highlighting the importance of wild insects for mango pollination. We detected a trend between wild bee abundance and the final fruit set, with an increase of 20% when the number of bees increased from 25 to 125. </li> <li>Urbanization did not directly affect pollinator abundance or mango yield. However, the amount of insecticide applications had strong negative effects on wild bee abundance at low and intermediate levels of urbanization, while it had no effect in highly urbanized areas, presumably because of higher availability of flowering resources. Moreover, the amount of insecticides decreased the weight of harvested mango fruits by almost 30%. This may indicate trade-offs between conventional pest control and enhanced crop yields through pollination by wild insects in rural areas. </li> <li> Synthesis and applications. Our results indicate that mango production can be maintained at a profitable level in urbanized landscapes with insect pollinators more than tripling final yield. However, increasing use of insecticides, besides raising farmers' expenses, can have negative effects on wild insect pollinators and mango yield, especially in rural areas. To safeguard crucial pollination services, it is therefore critical to conserve and promote wild insect pollinators by minimizing the negative effects of insecticide applications in these areas. </li> </ol>

opencc-zeroJul 2023View details →

dryad36/100

Flower strip effectiveness for pollinating insects in agricultural landscapes depends on established contrast in habitat quality: A meta-analysis

Flower strips have become a prevalent measure in agricultural landscapes to counteract biodiversity loss and especially promote pollinators. Although their benefits for pollinating insects have been frequently evaluated and reported, generalized conclusions about optimal settings for effective flower strips are still difficult. From the perspective of pollinators, flower strips vary distinctly in habitat quality, and the same applies for the control sites selected for scientific studies. In this study, we used a meta-analytic approach based on a systematic review of recent studies (2009-2020) to analyze the relationship between flower strip effectiveness for pollinators and the contrast in habitat quality between flower strips and control sites. We extracted 350 data entries from 29 out of 172 studies based on available data for richness or abundance of the pollinator taxa groups Apiformes, Lepidoptera and Syrphidae as response variables, for both flower strips and control treatments. All flower strips and control treatments were assigned a habitat quality score including information on spatial dimension, floral resources and management. Moreover, we included information on landscape complexity as measured by percent cover of semi-natural habitats in the studied landscape. In general, our results of meta-analytical models showed an increasing effect size of flower strips on pollinators for higher contrasts in habitat quality between flower strips and control treatments. This relationship was consistent across pollinator taxa and different levels of landscape complexity. Altogether, in terms of pollinator habitat quality, high-quality flower strips were more attractive than low-quality flower strips, and the reported effectiveness of flower strips decreased from low-quality to high-quality control treatments. We recommend that results of future studies evaluating flower strips for pollinators are always linked with the contrast in habitat quality between selected flower strips and control treatments.

opencc-zeroJul 2023View details →

zenodo36/100

Data: Single visit stigmatic pollen deposition by insect pollinators of Avocado (Persea americana) in New Zealand.

A wide range of bee and non-bee insects visit the flowers of avocado (Persea americana Mill.) in New Zealand (Read et al., 2017). To determine whether any of these insects contribute to pollination, we assessed single visit stigmatic pollen deposition for 12 insect species. Orchards were located in the Bay of Plenty 37.4234° S, 176.7416° E  (n=6) and Northland 35.4136° S, 173.9321° E (n=1) regions of New Zealand, and data was collected in 2013 and 2014. In total, data was collected from 312 flower visits.

opencc-by-4.0Aug 2023View details →

dryad36/100