Accessibility navigation


Density of insect-pollinated grassland plants decreases with increasing surrounding land-use intensity

Clough, Y., Ekroos, J., Báldi, A., Batáry, P., Bommarco, R., Gross, N., Holzschuh, A., Hopfenmuller, S., Knop, E., Kuussaari, M., Lindborg, R., Marini, L., Öckinger, E., Potts, S. G. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2045-980X, Pöyry, J., Roberts, S. P.M., Steffan-Dewenter, I. and Smith, H. G. (2014) Density of insect-pollinated grassland plants decreases with increasing surrounding land-use intensity. Ecology Letters, 17 (9). pp. 1168-1177. ISSN 1461-0248

Full text not archived in this repository.

It is advisable to refer to the publisher's version if you intend to cite from this work. See Guidance on citing.

To link to this item DOI: 10.1111/ele.12325

Abstract/Summary

Pollinator declines have raised concerns about the persistence of plant species that depend on insect pollination, in particular by bees, for their reproduction. The impact of pollinator declines remains unknown for species-rich plant communities found in temperate seminatural grasslands. We investigated effects of land-use intensity in the surrounding landscape on the distribution of plant traits related to insect pollination in 239 European seminatural grasslands. Increasing arable land use in the surrounding landscape consistently reduced the density of plants depending on bee and insect pollination. Similarly, the relative abundance of bee-pollination-dependent plants increased with higher proportions of non-arable agricultural land (e.g. permanent grassland). This was paralleled by an overall increase in bee abundance and diversity. By isolating the impact of the surrounding landscape from effects of local habitat quality, we show for the first time that grassland plants dependent on insect pollination are particularly susceptible to increasing land-use intensity in the landscape.

Item Type:Article
Refereed:Yes
Divisions:Life Sciences > School of Agriculture, Policy and Development > Department of Sustainable Land Management > Centre for Agri-environmental Research (CAER)
ID Code:37202
Uncontrolled Keywords:Agricultural intensification; bee specificity; canopy height; insect dependence; leaf dry matter content; mutualism disruption; plant–pollinator interactions; specific leaf area
Publisher:Wiley

University Staff: Request a correction | Centaur Editors: Update this record

Page navigation