Land-use change disrupts wild plant pollination on a global scale
Highly specialized plants particularly at risk

Date:
August 10, 2020
Source:
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv)
Halle-Jena- Leipzig
Summary:
Human changes to the environment have been linked to widespread
pollinator declines. New research shows that intensive land use
will further decrease pollination and reproductive success of wild
plants, especially of those plants that are highly specialized in
their pollination.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Human changes to the environment have been linked to widespread pollinator declines. New research published in Nature Communications shows that
intensive land use will further decrease pollination and reproductive
success of wild plants, especially of those plants that are highly
specialized in their pollination. An international team of scientists
led by researches from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity
Research (iDiv), Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) performed a global
data analysis that provided conclusive evidence of the links of human
land use and pollination of plants.


========================================================================== Plants provide resources including food and shelter to all other
living organisms on earth. Most plants need pollinators to reproduce,
which is why mounting research showing widespread pollinator declines
is concerning. Despite concerns we are facing a pollination crisis, we
do not know which types of plants will be most affected by pollinator
declines and under which conditions declines in plant reproductive
success are to be expected.

Changes in land-use are the leading threat to plants and
pollinators. However, different groups of pollinators may have different responses to changes in land-use. For example, some farming practises may increase honeybee abundance on the one hand but reduce the abundance of
other pollinators such as wild bees and butterflies on the other hand. Dr Joanne Bennett, who led the research as a postdoctoral researcher at
iDiv and MLU and is now working at the University of Canberra, said:
"Plants and their pollinators have evolved relationships over millions of
years . Humans are now changing these relationships in just a few years."
A global data set on land use and pollen limitation To determine if
land use effects pollen limitation, an international team of researchers
set out to compile a global dataset that quantified the degree to which pollenation limits plant reproductive success. For this, they analysed thousands of published pollen supplementation experiments -- experiments
that estimate the magnitude of pollen limitation by comparing the number
of seeds produced by naturally pollinated flowers with flowers receiving
hand supplemented pollen. Joanne Bennett said: "If naturally pollinated
plants produce less fruits or seeds than plants that have received
additional pollen by hand then the reproduction of that plant population
is limited -- this is called pollen limitation. In this way, pollen
limitation experiments provide an unparalled opportunity to link plant reproductive function to the health of pollination services." It was
almost 20 years ago when Prof Dr Tiffany Knight, Alexander von Humboldt professor at MLU and head of the Spatial Interaction Ecology research
group at iDiv and UFZ, started to compile the first data sets. Supported
by iDiv's synthesis centre sDiv, Knight and Bennett took the project to
a new level by forming a group of 16 experts from all over the world to
expand the dataset and generate new ideas. The researchers started with
1,000 experiments on 306 plant species from Europe and North America. To
date, it includes data from over 2,000 experiments and more than 1,200
plants and has a more global distribution. Tiffany Knight said: "One of
the most rewarding components of this research has been the collaboration
with the international team, and the inclusion of studies published in languages other than English." Specialists and plants in intensely
used landscape highly pollen limited Ultimately, this data allowed
for a global meta-analysis, which showed that wild plants in intensely
used landscapes, such as urban areas, are highly pollen limited. The researchers found that plants that are specialized in their pollination
are particularly at risk of pollen limitation, but this varies across
the different land-use types and is based on which pollinator taxa they
are specialized on. For example, plants specialized on bees were less
pollen limited in agriculturally managed lands than those specialized
on other pollinator types. This could be because domesticated honey bees support the pollination of wild plants in these lands.

The results show conclusively that intensive land use is linked to
lower plant reproductive success due to lower pollination success. This suggests that future land-use change will decrease the pollination and reproductive success of plants, and can cause plant communities to become
more dominated by species that are generalized in their pollination.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by German_Centre_for_Integrative_Biodiversity_Research_
(iDiv)_Halle-Jena-Leipzig. Note: Content may be edited for style and
length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Joanne M. Bennett, Janette A. Steets, Jean H. Burns, Laura
A. Burkle,
Jana C. Vamosi, Marina Wolowski, Gerardo Arceo-Go'mez, Martin Burd,
Walter Durka, Allan G. Ellis, Leandro Freitas, Junmin Li, James G.

Rodger, Valentin Ştefan, Jing Xia, Tiffany M. Knight, Tia-Lynn
Ashman. Land use and pollinator dependency drives global patterns
of pollen limitation in the Anthropocene. Nature Communications,
2020; 11 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-17751-y ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200810103233.htm

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