Plant-pollinator interactions in changing landscapes

WILLIAMS N., CRONE E., WINFREE R., AGUILAR R., ROULSTON T., PACKER L., POTTS S., MINCKLEY R.

Durban, South Africa

Simposio; XXIII International Congress of Entomology; 2008

Entomological Society of Southern Africa

The loss and degradation of habitat resulting from human activities are among the greatestthreats to biological diversity and to the ecological interactions and functions that depend onthis diversity. Pollination is one such function that is a critical to plant and animal persistence,and which increases with the diversity and abundance of pollinators in the community. Thetendency has been to consider natural habitats as good for pollinators and human-alteredhabitats as uniformly bad; however, recent studies call this generalization into question. Weused a formal meta-analysis and hierarchical modelling to test the responses of native beecommunities to different landscape changes and other anthropogenic disturbances. Themeta-analysis revealed that habitat loss and fragmentation negatively affect abundance anddiversity. Response to other disturbance types was variable, in part due to limited samples.The more detailed hierarchical model allows us to explore whether functional-traits helpexplain responses of bees within and among disturbance types. Here we define functional traitgroups as species with similar life histories (social vs. social), nesting strategies, bodysizes, or trophic specialization. Preliminary results from different studies show that generalnesting habit (e.g., ground-nesting vs. twig-nesting) and sociality can determine sensitivity todifferent land use changes. Less is known about the role of other functional traits.