Effects of temporal floral resource availability and non-crop habitats on broad bean pollination
Philipp W. Eckerter, Matthias Albrecht, Colette Bertrand, Erika Gobet, Félix Herzog, Sonja C. Pfister, Willy Tinner, Martin H. Entling
Abstract
Context: Flowering plants can enhance wild insect populations and their pollination services to crops in agricultural landscapes, especially when they flower before the focal crop. However, characterizing the temporal availability of specific floral resources is a challenge. Objectives: Developing an index for the availability of floral resources at the landscape scale according to the specific use by a pollinator. Investigating whether detailed and temporally-resolved floral resource maps predict pollination success of broad bean better than land cover maps. Methods: ), a plant typically pollinated by bumblebees, were exposed in the center of selected landscapes. Results: Higher floral resource availability before bean flowering led to enhanced seed set. Floral resource availability synchronous to broad bean flowering had no effect. Seed set was somewhat better explained by land cover maps than by floral resource availability, increasing with urban area and declining with the cover of arable land. Conclusions: The timing of alternative floral resource availability is important for crop pollination. The higher explanation of pollination success by land cover maps than by floral resource availability indicates that additional factors such as habitat disturbance and nesting sites play a role in pollination. Enhancing non-crop woody plants in agricultural landscapes as pollen sources may ensure higher levels of crop pollination by wild pollinators such as bumblebees. Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10980-022-01448-2.