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Content with tag ecosystem service .

Predictors of pollinator service

Pollinator service is essential for successful sexual reproduction and long?term population persistence of animal?pollinated plants, and innumerable studies have shown that insufficient service by pollinators results in impaired sexual reproduction (“pollen limitation”). Studies directly addressing the predictors of variation in pollinator service across species or habitats remain comparatively scarce, which limits our understanding of the primary causes of natural variation in pollen...

A global synthesis reveals biodiversity-mediated benefits for crop production

Human land use threatens global biodiversity and compromises multiple ecosystem functions critical to food production. Whether crop yield–related ecosystem services can be maintained by a few dominant species or rely on high richness remains unclear. Using a global database from 89 studies (with 1475 locations), the relative importance of species richness, abundance, and dominance (relative species abundance) for pollination; biological pest control, and final yields in the context of...

Honeybees disrupt the structure and functionality of plant-pollinator networks

The honeybee Apis mellifera is the primary managed species worldwide for both crop pollination and honey production. Owing to beekeeping activity, its high relative abundance potentially affects the structure and functioning of pollination networks in natural ecosystems. Given that evidences about beekeeping impacts are restricted to observational studies of specific species and theoretical simulations, experimental data are still lacking to test for their larger-scale impacts on...

Use of commercial bumble bees as pollinators in the strawberry “Fortuna” crops does not enhance crop yield

Animal-mediated pollination is essential for the production and quality of fruits and seeds of many crops consumed by humans. However, crop pollination services might be compromised when wild pollinators are scarce. Managed pollinators are commonly used in crops to supplement such services with the assumption that they will enhance crop yield. However, information on the spatiotemporal pollinator-dependence of crops is still limited. The contribution of commercial bumble bee colonies compared...

The importance of bee diversity for crop pollination

Ecologists have shown through hundreds of experiments that ecological communities with more species produce higher levels of essential ecosystem functions such as biomass production, nutrient cycling, and pollination, but whether this finding holds in nature is controversial. This knowledge gap is troubling because ecosystem services have been widely adopted as a justification for global biodiversity conservation. .
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