CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Plant?pollinator interactions and associated pollination services are essential for crop production and the integrity of terrestrial ecosystem services. Introduced pollinators, in particular honeybees and bumblebees, have become invaders in many regions, strongly affecting the pollination of native, cultivated, and invasive plants. These effects can be ?direct?, when invaders interact with local flowering plants, or ?indirect?, when invaders modify the interaction of native pollinators with flowering plants. Direct effects on pollination depend on whether the plant benefits from the flower visits are greater than their costs, a relation that can be density-dependent. Shifts from mutualism to antagonism occur when invasive pollinators reach extremely high densities, because interaction costs exceeds benefit. Indirect effects depend on whether invaders alter the benefit-cost of native pollinator visits, displace them, or trigger reductions on pollinators diversity.Through a literature review we found that the impacts of invasive pollinators on pollination services were predominantly negative for native plants, mixed for crops, and positive for invasive plants. Thus, invasive pollinators can facilitate plant invasions. Furthermore, they can synergistically interact with other stressors on pollination like climate change and habitat disturbance. Although invasive pollinators can backup pollination of some native plants in highly disturbed habitats, and some crops in intensively modified agroecosystems, they cannot replace the role of a diverse pollinator assemblage for wild plant reproduction and crop yield. Hence, managing agroecosystems for enhancing wild pollinators diversity, and avoiding further introductions of non native pollinators are realistic and cost-effective measures for the provision and stability of pollination services.