Davis, Abby E

Schmidt, Lena A

Santos, Karen C B S

Rowbottom, Raylea

Lucas, Amy

Harrington, Samantha

Spurr, Cameron

Rader, Romina

2025-05-01

<p>Hybrid cropping systems generally depend on insect pollinators to produce high quality yields. In this study, we identified the floral insect community of Australian carrot agroecosystems and evaluated how the location of plants within fields and select environmental conditions (temperature, relative humidity) impacted visitor abundance to carrot flowers. We further evaluated the pollination effectiveness of select insect visitors based on the time of day the pollination event took place. Out of 26,083 carrot floral visitors observed, we identified 52 different insects (33 species and 19 morphospecies) from 26 families. Of these visitors, 86 % belonged to the families Coccinellidae (Coleoptera), Apidae (Hymenoptera), Halictidae (Hymenoptera), and Syrphidae (Diptera). Wild variegated lady beetles (<i>Hippodamia variegata</i> Goeze, 1777) were the most abundant floral visitor observed on hybrid parent lines, while European honey bees (<i>Apis mellifera</i> Linnaeus, 1758) were the most abundant visitor of open-pollinated lines. The abundance of common bee, beetle, and fly taxa differed throughout the day (range: 05:00–17:00) based on temperature (10.5ºC to 39.5ºC) and relative humidity (19.7 %–94.7 %). Further, temporal complementary was observed in measures of pollination performance as <i>A. mellifera</i> and the European drone fly, <i>Eristalis tenax</i> (Linnaeus, 1758), deposited more pollen grains onto hybrid carrot floral stigmas compared to the native halictid bee<i> Lasioglossum cognatum</i> (Smith, 1853) before 12:00 (05:00–12:00), while <i>L. cognatum</i> deposited more pollen grains onto flowers compared to <i>A. mellifera</i> and <i>E. tenax</i> after 12:00 (12:00 and 17:00). The results of this study imply that integrated management practices to support the resource needs of wild bee and fly taxa can potentially provide increased pollination services to carrot seed crops.</p>

Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, v.383, p. 1-9

1873-2305

0167-8809

https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/64952

en

Elsevier BV

Attribution 4.0 International

Environmental drivers, spatiotemporal dynamics, and pollination effectiveness of insect floral visitors in Australian seed carrot agroecosystems

Journal Article

Publication