Stability of pollination services decreases with isolation from natural areas despite honey bee visits

Abstract

Sustainable agricultural landscapes by definition provide high magnitude and stability of ecosystem services, biodiversity and crop productivity. However, few studies have considered landscape effects on the stability of ecosystem services. We tested whether isolation from florally diverse natural and semi-natural areas reduces the spatial and temporal stability of flower-visitor richness and pollination services in crop fields. We synthesised data from 29 studies with contrasting biomes, crop species and pollinator communities. Stability of flowervisitor richness, visitation rate (all insects except honey bees) and fruit set all decreased with distance from natural areas. At 1 km from adjacent natural areas, spatial stability decreased by 25, 16 and 9% for richness, visitation and fruit set, respectively, while temporal stability decreased by 39% for richness and 13% for visitation. Mean richness, visitation and fruit set also decreased with isolation, by 34, 27 and 16% at 1 km respectively. In contrast, honey bee visitation did not change with isolation and represented > 25% of crop visits in 21 studies. Therefore, wild pollinators are relevant for crop productivity and stability even when honey bees are abundant. Policies to preserve and restore natural areas in agricultural landscapes should enhance levels and reliability of pollination services.

Impact of human disturbance on bee pollinator communities in savanna and agricultural sites in Burkina Faso, West Africa

“…The fact that almost half the studies on pollinator decline comes from only five countries (Australia, Brazil, Germany, Spain and USA), with only 4% of the data from the African continent (Archer et al., 2014; Winfree, Bartomeus, & Cariveau, 2011), highlights the bias in information and the lack of data from some regions. Although movements of pollinators from natural to managed agricultural landscapes have been documented across a wide range of both tropical and temperate habitats and managed landscapes (Garibaldi et al., 2011; Klein et al., 2007), most of the studies were carried out in Europe and North America. Examples from tropical regions are less available and include rainforest habitats providing resources for pollinating bees for coffee agroecosystems in Indonesia (Klein, Steffan‐Dewenter, & Tscharntke, 2003a), Costa Rica (Ricketts, 2004), Brazil (De Marco & Coelho, 2004), and Tanzania (Classen et al., 2014).…”

Frequency and foraging behavior of Apis mellifera in two melon hybrids in Juazeiro, state of Bahia, Brazil

“…It is estimated that 75% of the cultures and 80% of the plants with flowers depend of pollination made by biotic agents, among which bees are the most known (Imperatriz-Fonseca and Nunes-Silva 2010). The temporal and spacial distribution of the diversity of pollinators and pollination services are important for the preservation of native plants and animals and also to maintain a good productivity of the crops as well (Garibaldi et al 2011). …”

Functional traits in agriculture: agrobiodiversity and ecosystem services

“…In pollinator systems, sociality (a key pollinator trait) is a strong predictor of pollinator response to fragmentation at the landscape scale [46]. Such landscape fragmentation, and resulting distance between pollinator habitat and crops, can have significant negative impacts on yields [47,48]. Given that traits determine the movement of species through a landscape, as well as their effect on that landscape, more research is needed to understand how the influence of a community on ecosystem services scales up to the landscape (Box 2).…”