Relationships between wild bees, hoverflies and pollination success in apple orchards with different landscape contexts

Abstract

Abstract:1. Pollination is an important ecosystem service as many agricultural crops such as fruit trees are pollinated by insects. Agricultural intensification, however, is one of the main drivers resulting in a serious decline of pollinator populations worldwide. 2. In this study pollinator communities were examined in twelve apple orchards surrounded by either homogeneous or heterogeneous landscape in Hungary. Pollinators (honey bees, wild bees, hoverflies) were surveyed in the flowering period of apple trees. Landscape heterogeneity was characterized in circles of 300, 500 and 1000 m radius around each orchard using Shannon's diversity and Shannon's evenness indices. 3. We found that pollination success of apple was significantly related to the species richness of wild bees, regardless the dominance of honey bees. 4. Diversity of the surrounding landscape matrix had a marginal positive effect on the species richness of hoverflies at 300m, positive effect on the species richness of wild bees at 500m radius circle, while evenness of the surrounding landscape enhanced the abundance of wild bees at 500m radius circle. Flower resources in the groundcover within the orchards supported honey bees. 5. Therefore maintenance of semi-natural habitats within 500m around apple orchards is highly recommended to enhance wild pollinator communities and apple production. Apple is one of the most important insect pollinated crops in the European Union, accounting 51 for 16% of the EU's total economic gains attributed to insect (particularly bee) pollination 52 (Leonhardt et al., 2013). Most apple varieties are cross-pollinated and insect pollination not 53 only affects the quantity of apple production, but can also have marked impacts on the quality 54 of the fruits, influencing size, shape and their market price (Garratt et al., 2014a). The most 55 common insect pollinator of apple is the honey bee (Apis mellifera); however, it is not the bees (Bosch & Blas, 1994). Hoverflies (Syrphidae) have also been observed with pollen loads 63 containing a high proportion of compatible fruit pollen (Kendall, 1973). Agricultural and Forest Entomology 64In the temperate zone, pollinator insects are under threat from a number of limiting 65 factors, such as climate change (Rader et al., 2013), human disturbance (Goulson et al., 66 2008), agricultural intensification (Kearns et al., 1998; Steffan-Dewenter et al., 2005; 67 Fitzpatrick et al., 2006; Memmott et al., 2007), and landscape fragmentation (Aizen & 68 Feisinger, 2003; Diekötter & Crist, 2013), which leads to less effective pollination and 69 reduces agricultural production (Floyd, 1992; Garibaldi et al., 2011a Garibaldi et al., , 2013 (Kremen et al., 2002; Brittain et al., 2013). Maintaining diverse communities, 94Apple is the most important fruit tree in Hungary, as it provides 60 % of the total 95Hungarian fruit production, and currently amounts to 400-600 thousand tons annually on We constructed generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) for each response variab...

Response of wild bee diversity, abundance, and functional traits to vineyard inter‐row management intensity and landscape diversity across Europe

“…Wild bees and honey bees are important pollinators of crops (Brittain, Williams, Kremen, & Klein, ; Klein et al, ) and wild plants (Fontaine, Dajoz, Meriguet, & Loreau, ). Pollination efficiency of different crops is strongly related to wild bee species diversity (Földesi et al, ; Winfree et al, ) as well as functional diversity (Fontaine et al, ; Garibaldi et al, ). Research demonstrated that wild bees are threatened by intensive agricultural practices (Kremen, Williams, & Thorp, ) such as high pesticide application (Woodcock et al, ), and/or frequent soil tillage (Williams et al, ), which result in reduction of floral resource availability (Williams et al, ) and contribute to landscape simplification (Senapathi, Goddard, Kunin, & Baldock, ).…”

“…Wild bees and honey bees are important pollinators of crops (Brittain, Williams, Kremen, & Klein, 2013;Klein et al, 2007) and wild plants (Fontaine, Dajoz, Meriguet, & Loreau, 2006). Pollination efficiency of different crops is strongly related to wild bee species diversity (Földesi et al, 2015;Winfree et al, 2018) as well as functional diversity (Fontaine et al, 2006;Garibaldi et al, 2015).…”

Come to the dark side! The role of functional traits in shaping dark diversity patterns of south‐eastern European hoverflies

“…Hoverflies (Diptera: Syrphidae) play important roles in providing vital ecosystem services such as pollination (Ssymank & Kearns, 2009;Petanidou et al, 2011;Jauker et al, 2012), waste decomposition (Gilbert, 1985), and biological control (White et al, 1995;Blaauw & Isaacs, 2012;Day et al, 2015). Recent studies have shown that hoverflies can serve as valuable model organisms in studies of climate change (Kaloveloni et al, 2015;Radenković et al, 2017;Miličić et al, 2018), urbanisation (Bates et al, 2011;Verboven et al, 2014), landscape structure (Power et al, 2016) or land use (Aguirre-Gutiérrez et al, 2015;Földesi et al, 2016;Lucas et al, 2017).…”

Complementarity and redundancy in the functional niche of cider apple pollinators

“…Besides honeybee, wild insects, including bumblebees, solitary bees and hoverflies, visit apple blossoms (e.g. Földesi et al 2016;Martins et al 2015;Russo et al 2017). Importantly, the abundance and diversity of wild pollinators positively affect apple yield (Földesi et al 2016;Martins et al 2015;Blitzer et al 2016).…”

“…Földesi et al 2016;Martins et al 2015;Russo et al 2017). Importantly, the abundance and diversity of wild pollinators positively affect apple yield (Földesi et al 2016;Martins et al 2015;Blitzer et al 2016). These positive effects seem to be related to the additive contributions of various pollinators that differ in abundance and quality depending on their foraging patterns (Thomson and Goodell 2001;Martins et al 2015;Park et al 2016).…”