The nutritional landscape in agroecosystems: a review on how resources and management practices can shape pollinator health in agricultural environments

Abstract

Pollinator nutrition is a highly complex subject that we are just starting to unravel, from the multidimensional nature of bee forage (pollen and nectar) to how the abiotic environment can affect the resources available to bees. Doing so is of utmost importance, as improving pollinator resource availability and nutrition is one of the proposed mechanisms to improve populations and pollinator health. However, landscape change has changed the resources naturally available for pollinators. Farmland and cropping systems create a unique nutritional landscape for pollinators, with agroecosystems typically containing few crops dominating a landscape along with natural corridors containing noncrop plants. The types of crops planted and the surrounding landscape will ultimately affect the nutritional landscape bees have access to. Even the management practices in agriculture and how pests are controlled will, directly and indirectly, affect bee health and nutrition. Hence, a better understanding of bee nutrition in agricultural ecosystems is warranted. This review synthesizes research on bee nutritional ecology and the agricultural landscapes to advance our understanding of bee health in agriculture.

Wild Bee is an Important Contributor to the Nutrient Cycle, as Shown by Biogeochemical Niche Analysis of Osmia Bicornis

“…In recent years, the decline in pollinators has been attributed to poor nutrition resulting from landscape changes caused by human activities (LeBuhn & Vargas Luna 2021;Leroy et al, 2023;López-Uribe et al 2020;Parreño et al 2022). Although this is a widely accepted view, the underlying mechanisms by which pollinators depend on their nutritional landscapes are not yet fully understood (Lau et al 2023;Pioltelli et al 2023;Stevenson et al 2022). Thus, it is crucial to explore the dependence of pollinators on their nutritional landscapes in greater depth (Gillespie et al 2022;Leroy et al, 2023;Stevenson et al 2022), including the biology of the chemical elements (Lau et al 2022;Ausma et al 2021;van der Kooi et al 2021).…”

Sustainable sweetpotato production in the United States: Current status, challenges, and opportunities

“…The presence of pollinators and their interactions with crops in these systems have been shown to provide benefits to crop yield, providing an opportunity for row-crop farmers and beekeepers to coexist with the shared interest of expanding their operations (Esquivel et al, 2021;Kral-Obrien et al, 2021). At the same time, landscape simplification and biotic homogenization have also altered the nutritional landscape available to bees (Hendrickx et al, 2007;Lau et al, 2023). With widespread pollinator population decline due to interacting stressors, which include habitat fragmentation and pesticide use, intentional management practices to promote flowering resources in large-scale agriculture to improve the overall ecosystem are critical for mitigating the stressors contributing to declining pollinator health (Crone & Grozinger, 2021;DeGrandi-Hoffman & Chen, 2015;Di Pasquale et al, 2013;Dolezal & Toth, 2018).…”

Assessing the analytical reliability of traditional and novel sampling methods for the study of flower rewards quality

“…However, another main threat is represented by the reduction of food resources available with consequent impoverishment of the pollinator diet, such as the reduction in terms of quantity and quality of foraged pollen and nectar (Hülsmann et al, 2015;Jones & Rader, 2022;Vaudo et al, 2015), with implications also for plant-insect interactions (Jamieson et al, 2017). Land-use changes related to the expansion of urban areas and agricultural intensification significantly reduce the extension and connectivity of suitable habitats and trophic resources for pollinators (Lau et al, 2023;Wenzel et al, 2020). Moreover, progressive (e.g., due to climate change events) or sudden (e.g., due to local scale transformation of habitats) changes in environmental conditions such as temperature, light exposure, and precipitation influence plant physiology, thus altering the chemical composition of their floral resources (Biella et al, 2022;Pioltelli et al, 2024;Russell & McFrederick, 2022).…”

“…Indeed, besides macronutrients (i.e., proteins, sugars, and lipids) which have a primary role in the development, sustenance, and metabolism regulation of pollinators (Di Pasquale et al, 2013;Nicolson, 2011;Vaudo et al, 2016), pollen and nectar also represent a source of micronutrients. They contain vitamins, minerals, phytosterols, and free amino acids that play crucial roles in many biological processes (Lau et al, 2023), from larval development (Vanderplanck et al, 2014) to learning performance (Palmer-Young et al, 2019). Another class of relevant compounds occurring in flower resources is that of phytochemicals (e.g., flavonoids, phenolic acids, terpenes, and alkaloids), which are even more considered for the role they play for pollinators at the physiological level (Ardalani et al, 2021;Koch et al, 2019;Mao et al, 2013;Niño et al, 2022).…”