Willcox, Bryony K

Howlett, Brad G

Robson, Andrew J

Cutting, Brian

Evans, Lisa

Jesson, Linley

Kirkland, Lindsey

Jean-Meyzonnier, Malou

Potdevin, Victoria

Saunders, Manu E

Rader, Romina

2019-09-19

Many pollinator species visit multiple crops in multiple regions, yet we know little about their pollination service provisioning at local and regional scales. We investigated the floral visitors (n = 13,200), their effectiveness (n = 1718 single visits) and response to landscape composition across three crops avocado, mango and macadamia within a single growing region (1 year), a single crop (3 years) and across different growing regions in multiple years. In total, eight wild visitor groups were shared across all three crops. The network was dominated by three pollinators, two bees (<i>Apis mellifera</i> and Tetragonula spp.) and a fly, <i>Stomorhina discolor</i>. The visitation network for the three crops was relatively generalised but with the addition of pollen deposition data, specialisation increased. Sixteen managed and wild taxa were consistently present across three years in avocado, yet their contribution to annual network structure varied. Node specialisation (d’) analyses indicated many individual orchard sites across each of the networks were significantly more specialised compared to that predicted by null models, suggesting the presence of site-specific factors driving these patterns. Identifying the taxa shared across multiple crops, regions and years will facilitate the development of specific pollinator management strategies to optimize crop pollination services in horticultural systems.

Scientific Reports, v.9, p. 1-10

2045-2322

1537826

https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/29495

en

Nature Publishing Group

Attribution 4.0 International

Evaluating the taxa that provide shared pollination services across multiple crops and regions

Journal Article

Publication