Projected climate change threatens pollinators and crop production in Brazil

Abstract

Animal pollination can impact food security since many crops depend on pollinators to produce fruits and seeds. However, the effects of projected climate change on crop pollinators and therefore on crop production are still unclear, especially for wild pollinators and aggregate community responses. Using species distributional modeling, we assessed the effects of climate change on the geographic distribution of 95 pollinator species of 13 Brazilian crops, and we estimated their relative impacts on crop production. We described these effects at the municipality level, and we assessed the crops that were grown, the gross production volume of these crops, the total crop production value, and the number of inhabitants. Overall, considering all crop species, we found that the projected climate change will reduce the probability of pollinator occurrence by almost 0.13 by 2050. Our models predict that almost 90% of the municipalities analyzed will face species loss. Decreases in the pollinator occurrence probability varied from 0.08 (persimmon) to 0.25 (tomato) and will potentially affect 9% (mandarin) to 100% (sunflower) of the municipalities that produce each crop. Municipalities in central and southern Brazil will potentially face relatively large impacts on crop production due to pollinator loss. In contrast, some municipalities in northern Brazil, particularly in the northwestern Amazon, could potentially benefit from climate change because pollinators of some crops may increase. The decline in the probability of pollinator occurrence is found in a large number of municipalities with the lowest GDP and will also likely affect some places where crop production is high (20% to 90% of the GDP) and where the number of inhabitants is also high (more than 6 million people). Our study highlights key municipalities where crops are economically important and where pollinators will potentially face the worst conditions due to climate change. However, pollinators may be able to find new suitable areas that have the potential to improve crop production. The results shown here could guide policy decisions for adapting to climate change and for preventing the loss of pollinator species and crop production.

Equivocal Evidence for Colony Level Stress Effects on Bumble Bee Pollination Services

“…Climate change poses a number of threats to biotic processes [1,[74][75][76]. Obvious threats to plant -pollinator systems are perturbations in pollination services delivery due to loss of pollinator species and lower overall abundances across taxa due to changing distributions [71,77,78]. Our study indicates that there may be more subtle effects related to heat stress at the colony level, which in turn could impact on the delivery of pollination services.…”

A dataset of multi-functional ecological traits of Brazilian bees

“…Planetary decline and non-random loss of biodiversity have been reported in response to anthropogenic-driven actions 13 . Factors implicated in bee species decline include habitat loss due to landscape change, competition with invasive species for resources, emergent species (including pathogens), pesticides and climate change 12,[14][15][16] . Linking ecosystem functioning to biodiversity conservation is fundamental in determining the aims of policies and strategies for species and ecosystem conservation in the long term 17 .…”

Bee Pollination Highly Improves Oil Quality in Sunflower

“…Combined with the Brazilian climatic conditions, the expansion in sunflower productivity is benefited by the high number of bee species, being that Brazil is the second country with greater bee richness worldwide (Ascher & Pickering, 2018). However, projections for the year 2050 show that climate change will reduce the probability of pollinator occurrence, causing a negative impact on 100% of Brazilian municipalities where sunflowers are grown, and consequently affecting the Brazilian Gross Domestic Product and food security (Giannini et al, 2017). Considering the economic importance of sunflowers for several Brazilian agricultural sectors and bees maximize seed set of several commercial cultivars, our aim was to evaluate the effect of the bee community for (1) achene quality (weight and nutritional composition) and (2) market value.…”