Temporal and spatial heterogeneity of semi‐natural habitat, but not crop diversity, is correlated with landscape pollinator richness

Abstract

1. Enhancing the diversity of mass-flowering crops (i.e. crop diversity) in agricultural landscapes is often proposed as a measure to favour pollinators and pollination, but it is uncertain whether crop diversity enhances pollinator richness on the wide landscape level.2. Here, we surveyed pollinator communities in semi-natural habitats and massflowering crops throughout the whole growing season in 26 agricultural landscapes to examine how the temporal and spatial heterogeneity in semi-natural habitats and crop diversity support pollinator species richness.3. Crop diversity was unrelated to pollinator richness in the wider landscape, and temporal and spatial heterogeneity in semi-natural habitats were equally important in determining pollinator richness. Surprisingly, the crop pollinator species pool size was a fixed proportion of the landscape pollinator species pool along a 0%-72% semi-natural habitat cover gradient. 4. Synthesis and applications. Our results suggest that increasing crop diversity alone does not contribute to maintaining diverse wild pollinator communities in agricultural landscapes and emphasize the key role of temporally stable habitats such as semi-natural habitats to maintain rich pollinator communities.

Impact of landscape configuration and composition on pollinator communities across different European biogeographic regions

“…Our results show that the abundance of different groups of pollinators increased with the proportion of less-intensively managed habitats and with habitat diversity, confirming that heterogeneous habitats can support beneficial insects in agricultural landscapes, likely by offering a greater diversity of food and resources (Rundlöf et al, 2008b;Marini et al, 2012b;Nayak et al, 2015;Raderschall et al, 2021;Martínez-Núñez et al, 2022). Different pollinator taxa have different ecological and physiological requirements, and even individuals of the same species might benefit from diets based on a diversity of plant species (Cane and Sipes, 2007;Eckhardt et al, 2014;Bertrand et al, 2019), and during different stages of their life cycle (Erhardt, 1985;Erhardt and Mevi-Schütz, 2009;Meyer et al, 2009).…”

The Diversity of pollinator insects in vegetable gardens, Kabawo District, Muna Regency

“…The high visitation of various types of pollinator insects means that the number of flowers fully open is abundant so that nectar and pollen are widely available [50]. The low species richness is probably related to the limited resources provided by flowers and the suboptimal conditions (due to disturbances in the respective gardens, such as the use of pesticides) provided by the gardens limiting the visitation of various types of pollinator insects [51]. This research shows that the Shannon index of the pollinator insect community in eggplant gardens tends to be higher than in long bean gardens (Table 3), this shows that individual pollinator insects are distributed more evenly in the pollinator insect community in eggplant gardens compared to other gardens.…”

How can an intensively used agricultural landscape preserve diversity of Orthoptera assemblages?

“…The role of linear ruderal habitats (roadsides, ditch banks and other linear landscape elements) in preserving Orthoptera diversity is well studied (Berggren et al 2001(Berggren et al , 2002Vadkerti and Szövényi 2005;Eriksson et al 2013;Torma et al 2018). Studies mostly focused on the wildlife of natural and semi-natural patches nested within intensively cultivated arable lands (Duelli and Obrist 2003;Rand et al 2006;Braschler et al 2009;Jauker et al 2009;Marini et al 2010;Badenhausser and Cordeau 2012;Bátory et al 2016;Hall et al 2022;Martínez-Núñez et al 2022;Thorn et al 2022). The distribution of sites a priori categorized as linear ruderal habitats (country roadsides, dirt roads) between cluster groups showed that the naturalness and diversity of these habitats and their assemblages may be affected by various factors e.g.…”