Land Use Change Consistently Reduces α- But Not β- and γ-Diversity of Bees.

Land use change threatens global biodiversity and compromises ecosystem functions, including pollination and food production. Reduced taxonomic α-diversity is often reported under land use change, yet the impacts could be different at larger spatial scales (i.e.

Pollen carryover, pollinator movement, and spatial context impact the delivery of pollination services in apple orchards.

Assessing the relative contributions of different pollinator taxa to pollination services is a central task in both basic eco-evolutionary research and applied conservation and agriculture. To that end, many studies have quantified single-visit pollen deposition and visitation frequency, which together determine a pollinator species' rate of conspecific pollen delivery. However, for plant species that require or benefit from outcrossing, pollination service quality further depends upon the ratio of outcross to self-pollen deposited, which is determined by two additional pollinator traits: pollen carryover and movement patterns among genetically compatible plant individuals.

Effects of Temperature and Wildflower Strips on Survival and Macronutrient Stores of the Alfalfa Leafcutting Bee (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae) Under Extended Cold Storage.

Megachile rotundata (F.) is an important pollinator of alfalfa in the United States. Enhancing landscapes with wildflowers is a primary strategy for conserving pollinators and may improve the sustainability of M.

A global synthesis of the effects of diversified farming systems on arthropod diversity within fields and across agricultural landscapes.

Agricultural intensification is a leading cause of global biodiversity loss, which can reduce the provisioning of ecosystem services in managed ecosystems. Organic farming and plant diversification are farm management schemes that may mitigate potential ecological harm by increasing species richness and boosting related ecosystem services to agroecosystems. What remains unclear is the extent to which farm management schemes affect biodiversity components other than species richness, and whether impacts differ across spatial scales and landscape contexts.

Delivery of crop pollination services is an insufficient argument for wild pollinator conservation.

There is compelling evidence that more diverse ecosystems deliver greater benefits to people, and these ecosystem services have become a key argument for biodiversity conservation. However, it is unclear how much biodiversity is needed to deliver ecosystem services in a cost-effective way. Here we show that, while the contribution of wild bees to crop production is significant, service delivery is restricted to a limited subset of all known bee species.

Negative effects of pesticides on wild bee communities can be buffered by landscape context.

Wild bee communities provide underappreciated but critical agricultural pollination services. Given predicted global shortages in pollination services, managing agroecosystems to support thriving wild bee communities is, therefore, central to ensuring sustainable food production. Benefits of natural (including semi-natural) habitat for wild bee abundance and diversity on farms are well documented.

Biodiversity ensures plant-pollinator phenological synchrony against climate change.

Climate change has the potential to alter the phenological synchrony between interacting mutualists, such as plants and their pollinators. However, high levels of biodiversity might buffer the negative effects of species-specific phenological shifts and maintain synchrony at the community level, as predicted by the biodiversity insurance hypothesis. Here, we explore how biodiversity might enhance and stabilise phenological synchrony between a valuable crop, apple and its native pollinators.

Importance of plant traits and herbivory for invasiveness of Phragmites australis (Poaceae).

Biological invasions change native plant communities, but theory predicting whether introductions create naturalized or invasive species is lacking. Focusing on either plant traits or interactions of introduced plants with native biota creates unreliable results, and improvements may require integration of trait- and interaction-based approaches. To assess the importance of plant traits and herbivory on invasiveness, we incorporated herbivore effects in comparisons of growth and phenology of invasive Phragmites australis and its native congener P.