Multiyear study of pollinator efficiency and importance of a wide array of pollinators in a field-cultivated strawberry plot

Abstract

Using wild pollinators to pollinate crops without introducing human-managed pollinators is cost-effective and friendly to native ecosystems. To maintain stable, good-quality yields in crops that mainly use wild pollinators, it is essential to determine which flower visitors are important pollinators and their degree of importance. In this study, we observed flower-visiting insects for 5 years in outdoor cultivated strawberries surrounded by a semi-natural environment in central Japan. We estimated the pollination effectiveness and efficiency of the 10 main flower-visiting insect taxa on strawberries by examining the relationship between the number of visits per flower and subsequent achene fertilization rates per berry. Finally, the pollinator importance (%) to the total pollination service was estimated for each of the 10 main taxa and for all others. Among the 10 main insect taxa, 6 were effective pollinators, i.e., they significantly increased achene fertilization rates by increasing their number of visits to a flower. Considering the 5-year mean, these six taxa accounted for the top six important pollinators. Andrena (subgenus Micrandrena) spp. were the most important and three other bee taxa, including Apis mellifera and Ceratina spp., were the next most important pollinators; one fly and one butterfly species were also important pollinators. This indicates that strawberry pollinators were diverse in the study area. The flower-visit frequency and importance of many pollinators fluctuated from year to year, implying that various pollinators pollinate strawberry flowers each year, and in field surveys of crop-pollinator communities multiyear investigations are needed to identify important pollinators and to estimate their importance. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to quantify the proportional importance of each pollinator to the total pollination service for a crop.