Urban Pollinators: Ecology and Conservation

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Urban Pollinators: Ecology and Conservation

© All images Jane Memmott, University of Bristol Urban pollinators: ecology and e conservation Led by Professor Jane Memmott, University of Bristol [email protected] Urban environments are growing across the UK, and perhaps surprisingly, flower rich oases in otherwise uninviting city habitats can support large numbers of pollinators. For example, 35% of British hoverfly species were found in a single Leicester garden and honeybees produce more honey in urban Birmingham than in the surrounding countryside. Pollinators supply a crucial ecological service, and finding ways to improve their lot is a major challenge. This project will answer three questions: where exactly is the pollinator biodiversity in the UK – urban habitats, farmland or nature reserves, where are the hot-spots of pollinator biodiversity in cities and what can we do to improve their diversity and abundance? To answer the first two questions the researchers will look at whole communities of bees, flies, butterflies and beetles that visit flowers, constructing food webs that describe the patterns of flower-insect interactions. To answer the third question they will add flower mixtures high in nectar and pollen to selected city habitats in Bristol, Edinburgh, Leeds and Reading and test whether this increases pollinator species richness and abundance. ollinators Initiativ ollinators The research will provide the data that conservation practitioners working in urban habitats need to conserve pollinators. Seven practitioners are collaborators on the project and the research team will convey their results to the rest of the UK practitioner community via a fully funded practitioners’ conference at the end of the project. This project is in partnership with Dr Graham Stone at the University of Edinburgh, Dr Koos Biesmeijer and Professor Bill Kunin at the University of Leeds and Insect P Insect Dr Simon Potts at the University of Reading. roduced by JRS Document Solutions Document JRS by roduced P.

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The Robustness and Restoration of a Network of Ecological Networks
1 The robustness and restoration of a network of ecological networks 2 3 Michael J. O. Pocock1,2, Darren M. Evans1,3, Jane Memmott1 4 1 School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1UG, 5 UK 6 2 Current address: Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Crowmarsh Gifford, Wallingford, 7 Oxfordshire, OX10 8BB, UK 8 3 Current address: Department of Biological Sciences, Hardy Building, University of Hull, 9 Cottingham Road, Hull, HU6 7RX, UK 10 11 Correspondence to: Michael J. O. Pocock, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Crowmarsh 12 Gifford, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, OX10 8BB, UK. 13 Tel.: +44(0)117 9287481. 14 Email: [email protected] 15 16 1 sentence summary. The robustness of linked networks in an agroecosystem vary but do not 17 strongly co-vary. 18 This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of the AAAS for 19 personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Science journal , 24 Feb 2012: Vol. 335, Issue 6071, pp. 973-977 DOI: 10.1126/science.1214915 1 20 Understanding species’ interactions and the robustness of interaction networks to 21 species loss is essential to understand the effects of species’ declines and extinctions. In 22 most studies, different types of network (e.g food webs, parasitoid webs, seed dispersal 23 networks and pollination networks) have been studied separately. We sampled such 24 multiple networks simultaneously in an agroecosystem. We show that the networks 25 varied in their robustness; networks including pollinators appeared particularly fragile. 26 We show that, overall, networks did not strongly co-vary in their robustness suggesting 27 that ecological restoration, e.g.
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The Restoration of Ecological Interactions: Plant–Pollinator
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Sussex Research Online Journal of Applied Ecology 2008, 45, 742–752 doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2664.2007.01390.x TheBlackwell Publishing Ltd restoration of ecological interactions: plant–pollinator networks on ancient and restored heathlands Mikael Lytzau Forup†, Kate S. E. Henson, Paul G. Craze and Jane Memmott* School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1UG, UK Summary 1. Attempts to restore damaged ecosystems usually emphasize structural aspects of biodiversity, such as species richness and abundance. An alternative is to emphasize functional aspects, such as patterns of interaction between species. Pollination is a ubiquitous interaction between plants and animals. Patterns in plant–pollinator interactions can be analysed with a food web or complex- systems approach and comparing pollination webs between restored and reference sites can be used to test whether ecological restoration has taken place. 2. Using an ecological network approach, we compared plant–pollinator interactions on four pairs of restored and ancient heathlands 11 and 14 years following initiation of restoration management. We used the network data to test whether visitation by pollinators had been restored and we calculated pollinator importance indices for each insect species on the eight sites. Finally, we compared the robustness of the restored and ancient networks to species loss. 3. Plant and pollinator communities were established successfully on the restored sites. There was little evidence of movement of pollinators from ancient sites onto adjacent restored sites, although paired sites correlated in pollinator species richness in both years.
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Global Warming and the Disruption of Plant–Pollinator Interactions
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Effects of Alien Plants on Insect Abundance and Biomass: a Food-Web Approach
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Caroline King Phd Thesis
PUTTING POLLINATION QUALITY INTO ANALYSES OF FLORAL ECOLOGY: TESTING SYNDROMES THROUGH POLLINATOR PERFORMANCE Caroline King A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of St. Andrews 2012 Full metadata for this item is available in Research@StAndrews:FullText at: http://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10023/3219 This item is protected by original copyright Putting Pollination Quality into Analyses of Floral Ecology: Testing Syndromes through Pollinator Performance Caroline King This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of PhD at the University of St Andrews Date of Submission: 05/09/2011 This thesis is dedicated to my parents, Kevin and Fiona King, who have put up with a lot over the years, but never stopped supporting me and pretending to understand what I was studying. I wouldn’t have got this far without them. “In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” Charles Darwin “No power in the ‘verse can stop me.” River Tam, Firefly “Live now; make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again" Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek Next Generation 1. Candidate’s declarations: I, Caroline King hereby certify that this thesis, which is approximately 85,000 words in length, has been written by me, that it is the record of work carried out by me and that it has not been submitted in any previous application for a higher degree.
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Tolerance of Pollination Networks to Species Extinctions Jane Memmott1, Nickolas M
Received 14 March 2004 Accepted 24 August 2004 Published online 6 December 2004 Tolerance of pollination networks to species extinctions Jane Memmott1Ã, Nickolas M. Waser2 and Mary V. Price2 1School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UG, UK 2Department of Biology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA Mutually beneficial interactions between flowering plants and animal pollinators represent a critical ‘ecosys- tem service’ under threat of anthropogenic extinction. We explored probable patterns of extinction in two large networks of plants and flower visitors by simulating the removal of pollinators and consequent loss of the plants that depend upon them for reproduction. For each network, we removed pollinators at random, systematically from least-linked (most specialized) to most-linked (most generalized), and systematically from most- to least-linked. Plant species diversity declined most rapidly with preferential removal of the most-linked pollinators, but declines were no worse than linear. This relative tolerance to extinction derives from redundancy in pollinators per plant and from nested topology of the networks. Tolerance in pollination networks contrasts with catastrophic declines reported from standard food webs. The discrepancy may be a result of the method used: previous studies removed species from multiple trophic levels based only on their linkage, whereas our preferential removal of pollinators reflects their greater risk of extinction relative to that of plants. In both pollination networks, the most-linked pollinators were bumble-bees and some solitary bees. These animals should receive special attention in efforts to conserve temperate pollination systems. Keywords: conservation; food webs; generalization; nestedness; pollination; redundancy 1. INTRODUCTION theory of food webs (e.g.
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The Impact of an Alien Plant on a Native Plant–Pollinator Network
Ecology Letters, (2007) 10: 539–550 doi: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2007.01055.x LETTER The impact of an alien plant on a native plant– pollinator network: an experimental approach Abstract Martha E. Lopezaraiza-Mikel, Studies of pairwise interactions have shown that an alien plant can affect the pollination Richard B. Hayes, Martin R. of a native plant, this effect being mediated by shared pollinators. Here we use a Whalley and Jane Memmott* manipulative ﬁeld experiment, to investigate the impact of the alien plant Impatiens School of Biological Sciences, glandulifera on an entire community of coflowering native plants. Visitation and pollen University of Bristol, Woodland transport networks were constructed to compare replicated I. glandulifera invaded and Road, Bristol BS8 1UG, UK I. glandulifera removal plots. Invaded plots had significantly higher visitor species richness, *Correspondence: E-mail: visitor abundance and flower visitation. However, the pollen transport networks were [email protected] dominated by alien pollen grains in the invaded plots and consequently higher visitation may not translate in facilitation for pollination. The more generalized insects were more likely to visit the alien plant, and Hymenoptera and Hemiptera were more likely to visit the alien than Coleoptera. Our data indicate that generalized native pollinators can provide a pathway of integration for alien plants into native visitation systems. Keywords Competition, ecological networks, facilitation, food webs, generalization, Impatiens glandulifera, invasive species, pollen transport webs, pollination, visitation webs. Ecology Letters (2007) 10: 539–550 clearly demonstrated that an alien plant can appropriate the INTRODUCTION pollinators of a native plant, in their case leading to The scope for alien plants to inﬂuence essential ecosystem decreased visitation and thereby decreased seed set of the services such as pollination has only recently been revealed.
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Emerging Perspectives in the Restoration of Biodiversity-Based
TREE-1569; No. of Pages 7 Opinion Emerging perspectives in the restoration of biodiversity-based ecosystem services 1,2 3 1 Daniel Montoya , Lucy Rogers and Jane Memmott 1 School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1UG, UK 2 Departamento de Ecologıá, Universidad de Alcala´ , ES–28871 Alcala´ de Henares, Madrid, Spain 3 Avon Wildlife Trust, Jacobs Wells Road, Bristol, BS8 1DR, UK Given the large-scale anthropogenic alteration of natural habitats, ecological restoration is emerging as one of the most important disciplines in environmental science. Glossary Once habitats are physically restored, an important goal Body-size spectra: the distribution of the body sizes and abundances of of restoration is to recover the ecosystem services pro- organisms across trophic levels [35]. Body size influences network structure vided by the diversity of species and their interactions and ecosystem functioning (e.g., [35]) and, thus, the distribution of body sizes in a community is an indicator of the state of the community. (e.g., seed dispersal, pollination, pest control, and inva- Ecological engineering: design and management of ecosystems for the mutual sion resistance). However, current understanding of the benefit of humans and nature. The energy supplied by humans is small relative ecological processes underlying this recovery is often to the natural sources but sufficient to produce large effects in the resulting patterns and processes. incomplete and poorly integrated across different ecosys- Ecological restoration: process of assisting the recovery of ecosystems that tems. Here, we highlight recent conceptual findings in have been degraded, damaged, or destroyed. Ecosystem function: changes in energy and matter over time and space through biodiversity–ecosystem functioning, food-web theory, the interplay of biological activity and abiotic factors (physical and chemical).
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