Ecosystem services of pollinator diversity: a review of the relationship with pollen limitation of plant reproduction¹This article is part of a Special Issue entitled “Pollination biology research in Canada: Perspectives on a mutualism at different scales”.

Abstract

Recent work on the ecosystem service of biodiversity suggests that higher pollinator diversity could lower pollen limitation, but these two aspects of plant–pollinator communities have only rarely been causally connected. Here we present a review of studies that produced quantitative assessments of both pollinator diversity and evenness as well as pollen limitation of focal plant species. Although pollen limitation is expected to be lower when pollinator diversity is high, our analysis suggests this relationship is weak. The relationship may be obscured when features of the plant species (e.g., average level of specialization) are confounded with features of the plant communities (e.g., habitat). We encourage researchers investigating pollen limitation to consider including measures of diversity of the floral visitors, and their effectiveness. These data would permit a more powerful test of the relationships among these variables and improve our understanding of the critical elements of stable plant–pollinator networks.

Early spring floral foraging resources for pollinators in wet heathlands in Belgium

“…Pollination is considered as a key ecosystem service that is crucial to the reproduction of both wild plant and crop species (Corbet et al 1991;Davila et al 2012). Nevertheless, evidence about the decline of insect pollinators, have accumulated worldwide during the past three decades (Kosior et al 2007;Grixti et al 2009;Carvalheiro et al 2013;Nieto et al 2015).…”

Pollen limitation is uncommon in an endangered oak savannah ecosystem

“…Studies have shown that increased pollinator diversity increases pollination of plants, independent of the effects of pollinator abundance (Albrecht et al 2012;Fründ et al 2013), and thus we may expect a diverse assemblage of pollinators to mitigate PL (e.g., Gómez et al 2010). However, a recent review found that the link between diversity and PL is weak (Davila et al 2012). There is considerable redundancy in pollination systems for some plant species (Waser et al 1996), which may mean that loss of diversity can be compensated for by increased visitation by the remaining pollinators.…”

Grand challenges in biodiversity–ecosystem functioning research in the era of science–policy platforms require explicit consideration of feedbacks

“…[24,33,35,46]). Feedbacks in the pollinator/plant system provide a particularly good example [47,48] (figure 1e). Pollinator functional diversity can increase pollination and plant seed production [49,50], and plant diversity through niche complementarity (different pollinators pollinate different plants) as well as changes in pollinator behaviour [51,52].…”