Lecture series in Ecology and Environmental Research WS 2015/16

Functional diversity, complementarity and trait identity in pollination studies

Pollination of wild and cultivated plants is today frequently discussed as being an important ecosystem service with direct human benefits while being sensitive to land use intensification at habitat to landscape scales. To compensate for shortages of free and diverse pollination services by wild pollinators and to maximize crop yield, honey bee hives, consisting of a single bee species, are moved from one to the next cultivated crop in different regions of the world.

In my talk I will show how different pollinator functional groups are filling different spatial and environmental niches leading to high and stable pollination services in California almond production under changing environmental conditions. I will further show that trait matching between crop flowers and pollinating insect is most important to predict pollination effectiveness and that flies are playing and important role to secure crop pollination services across different crop systems and regions of the world. As flower-visiting and pollinating insects need flower resources to persist in diverse communities in agricultural landscapes, I will end my talk to discuss recent findings identifying which flower traits seem to be most predictive to attract high pollinator diversity.

My talk will cover case studies and global meta-analyses in basic and applied pollination ecology and biodiversity research, but I will try my best to make results understandable for a broader audience.

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