Effects of surrounding land-use on pollinator availability and flower visitation in semi-natural grasslands

Description

In many regions across the globe, pollinators have been negatively impacted by intensification
of agricultural management, loss of natural habitat, and habitat fragmentation. This raises
concerns about the persistence of plant species dependent on insect pollination for their
reproduction. Using an experimental setup consisting of 18 semi-natural grasslands along a
land-use intensity gradient, we link surrounding land-use to pollinator availability. Preliminary
results from 2 years of plant-insect observations suggest, as can be expected, that the response
to landscape composition differed among insect groups. Flower visits from bumblebees and
butterflies were positively related to the proportion arable crops as well as to mass flowering
crops, and negatively related to the proportion leys within 1 km from the focal area. The
opposite result was seen for beetles, with a similar trend for solitary bees. Visits from beetles
and moths were positively related, whereas visits from hoverflies and other flies were
negatively related to the proportion permanent grasslands in the surrounding 1 km. This
suggests that effects of landscape context on plant reproduction will differ based on identity of
pollinators visiting a plant. We are currently looking into trait-specific responses to land-use
for these insect groups, and analyzing pan trap, seed-set, biomass and plant community survey
data to understand how land-use driven pollinator-assembly-change impacts plant community
composition and ecosystem functioning.

Period	2022 Oct 14
Event title	35th Annual Meeting of the Scandinavian Association of Pollination Ecology (SCAPE)
Event type	Conference
Location	Uppsala, SwedenShow on map