Pollinators communities differ across years and crops

Danilo Bevk and Janez Prešern
Additional contact information
Danilo Bevk: Department of Organisms and Ecosystems Research, National Institute of Biology, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Janez Prešern: Animal Production Department, Agricultural Institute of Slovenia, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Plant, Soil and Environment, 2021, vol. 67, issue 10, 600-607

Abstract: Insect pollination is one of the most important ecosystem services. Pollinator communities are rarely studied across years and crops in the same location. The aim of this study was to investigate the pollinator community structure on five different fruit crops, as well as the activity of different pollinator groups during the day and their temperature preferences. Pollinator activity was observed across two years on apple trees and blueberry, strawberry, blackcurrant and raspberry bushes. Pollinator community structure varied by plant and year. Honeybees were the most numerous pollinators on all plants except blueberry bushes (39-95% of visits). Bumblebee numbers were high on blackcurrant (up to 28%) and blueberry bushes (up to 61%). Solitary bees visited all plants except blueberries. Honeybees, solitary bees, and hoverflies were most active in the middle of the day, while bumblebees became active earlier in the morning and remained active later in the evening. Pollinators also differed greatly in their temperature preferences. This knowledge gained is necessary for less harmful pesticide application management and the development of more sustainable agriculture to maintain pollinator diversity and thus reliable pollination in extreme weather conditions.

Keywords: fruit pollination; agroecology; biodiversity; wild bees; conservation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://pse.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/225/2021-PSE.html (text/html)
http://pse.agriculturejournals.cz/doi/10.17221/225/2021-PSE.pdf (application/pdf)
free of charge

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:caa:jnlpse:v:67:y:2021:i:10:id:225-2021-pse

DOI: 10.17221/225/2021-PSE

Access Statistics for this article

Plant, Soil and Environment is currently edited by Kateřina Součková

More articles in Plant, Soil and Environment from Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ivo Andrle ().