Plant richness and blooming cover affect abundance of flower visitors and network structure in Colombian orchards

Abstract

Pollination is essential to fruit production. How plant diversity and blooming events in and around orchards affect the pollinator community and the plant-flower-visitor network in neotropical systems remains largely unknown. 2 We surveyed the flower visitors in deciduous fruit trees and alternative blooming resources (other crops, hedgerows and weeds) in Colombia across 6 orchards over 12 months. We evaluated whether plant species richness and blooming cover influenced abundance and richness of flower visitors, as well as network-level connectance and specialization. We also assessed the role of alternative blooming resources for the flower visitors of deciduous fruit trees. 3 Overall, we found 66 taxa of flower visitors, 35 of which visited deciduous fruit trees.There was a greater abundance of flower visitors when there was higher richness of weedy species and greater blooming cover of deciduous fruit trees. Networks were less connected when there was lower crop and weedy species richness. Finally, flower visitor abundance and specialization increased when there were multiple hedgerow species in bloom with a high blooming cover. 4 We highlight the importance of maintaining alternative blooming resources in and around the orchards to support deciduous fruit tree pollinators and diversity in the plant flower-visitor network.

Landscape or local? Distinct responses of flower visitor diversity and interaction networks to different land use scales in agricultural tropical highlands

“…Less connected networks showed a relationship with larger areas of flowering crops and with flower density. This outcome may be due to the fact that weeds and flowering crops represent the only floral resource available to floral visitors in agricultural areas, and also because the most frequent and dominant blooming weeds attract the most generalist floral visitors (Vaca-Uribe et al, 2021). Our networks were also less connected when flower density and flowering-crops cover increased, but interestingly the flowering crops cover had a positive relationship with the diversity and richness of weeds.…”

Sunflower spines and beyond: Mechanisms and breadth of pollen that reduce gut pathogen infection in the common eastern bumble bee

“…As such, the inclusion of Asteraceae pollen in diverse pollen diets has the potential to reduce disease loads in B. impatiens without costs in terms of survival or reproduction. Additionally, consumption of dandelion pollen strongly reduced C. bombi counts (Figure 2), bringing to light the importance of considering Asteraceae ‘weeds’ as potential resources for bees, especially in otherwise ecologically depauperate environments (Campbell et al, 2017; Requier et al, 2015; Vaca‐Uribe et al, 2021, but see Vanderplanck et al, 2020).…”

Response of pollinator taxa to fire is consistent with historic fire regimes in the Sierra Nevada and mediated through floral richness†

“…Increasing floral richness may positively impact pollinators by providing pollen and nectar resources that vary temporally and spatially, providing reliable food resources for long‐lived, early, and late emerging species, as well as multiple generations of social bees (Ebeling et al., 2008; Kaluza et al., 2018; Ogilvie & Forrest, 2017; Roulston & Goodell, 2011). High floral diversity may result in more visitors due to increased attraction of large mixed species displays (Ghazoul, 2006; Vaca‐Uribe et al., 2021) or reduced competition among pollinators (Brosi et al., 2017; Kaluza et al., 2017). High floral diversity may also increase the likelihood of specialist pollinators finding their preferred host due to sampling effects (Loreau et al., 2001).…”