*[Enwl-eng] Wild Pollinators Critical the Crop Yields

[ENWLine]

*Loss of wild pollinators serious threat to crop yields, study finds*
Wild bees and other insects twice as effective as honeybees in
producing seeds and fruit on crops

Damian Carrington
* The Guardian, Thursday 28 February 2013 13.59 EST

Illustration Omitted:
A bee collects pollen from a sunflower. Photograph: Michael
Kooren/Reuters

The decline of wild bees and other pollinators may be an even more
alarming threat to crop yields than the loss of honeybees, a worldwide
study suggests, revealing the irreplaceable contribution of wild insects
to global food production.

Scientists studied the pollination of more than 40 crops in 600 fields
across every populated continent and found wild pollinators were twice
as effective as honeybees in producing seeds and fruit on crops
including oilseed rape, coffee, onions, almonds, tomatoes and
strawberries. Furthermore, trucking in managed honeybee hives did not
replace wild pollination when that was lost, but only added to the
pollination that took place.

"It was astonishing; the result was so consistent and clear," said Lucas
Garibaldi, at the National University in Río Negro, Argentina, who led
the 46-strong scientific team. "We know wild insects are declining so we
need to start focusing on them. Without such changes, the ongoing loss
is destined to compromise agricultural yields worldwide."

Pollination is needed for about three-quarters of global food crops. The
decline of honeybee colonies due to disease and pesticides has prompted
serious concern. Jason Tylianakis, at the University of Canterbury, New
Zealand, described them as "the species charged with protecting global
food security".

The new research shows for the first time the huge contribution of wild
insects and shows honeybees cannot replace the wild insects lost as
their habitat is destroyed. Garibaldi said relying on honeybees was a
"highly risky strategy" because disease can sweep through single
species, as has been seen with the varroa mite, and single species
cannot adapt to environmental changes nearly as well as a group of wild
pollinators.

"The studies show conclusively that biodiversity has a direct measurable
value for food production and that a few managed species cannot
compensate for the biodiversity on which we depend," said Tylianakis,
who was not part of the research team.

Garibaldi's team, whose work was published in the journal Science on
Thursday, warn: "Global degradation of natural services can undermine
the ability of agriculture to meet the demands of the growing,
increasingly affluent, human population."

Garibaldi said: "Without wild pollination, you will not get the best
yields and the best agricultural land already farmed, so it is very
important to get the maximum yield." He added that, across the world,
the yields of crops that needed pollination were rising significantly
more slowly than crops that did not.

Wild pollinators perform better than honeybees because they deploy a
wider range of pollinating techniques, such as "buzz" pollination. They
also visit more plants, meaning much more effective cross-pollination
than honeybees, which tend to carry pollen from one flower to another on
the same plant.

A second new study published in Science on Thursday showed more than
half the wild bee species were lost in the 20th century in the US. It
made use of a remarkable record made of plants and pollinators at
Carlinville, Illinois between 1888 and 1891 by entomologist Charles
Robertson. Scientists combined that with data from 1971-72 and new data
from 2009-10 to discover the changes in pollination seen over the
century as widespread forest was reduced to the fragments that remain today.

They found that half of the 109 bee species recorded by Robertson had
been lost and there had been a serious degradation of the pollination
provided by the remaining wild insects, with their ability to pollinate
specific plants falling by more than half. There was an increasing
mismatch between when plants flowered and when bees were active, a
finding consistent with climate change, according to the researchers.

Laura Burkle, at Washington University in Montana, who led the work,
said: "There are two sides to this coin. These pollination systems are
incredibly robust to environmental change, it is almost miraculous that
they continue to pollinate given the land use changes. But the system is
also incredibly compromised and further degradation will have serious
impacts."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/28/wild-bees-pollinators-crop-yields


*** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
material is distributed, without profit, for research and educational
purposes only. ***



From: "Yahoo Newsgroups" <vasi...@ramapo.edu>
Sent: Sunday, March 03, 2013 7:01 PM
Subject: News: Wild Pollinators Critical the Crop Yields


------------- * ENWL * ------------
Ecological North West Line * St. Petersburg, Russia
Independent Environmental Net Service: http://www.bellona.ru/enwl/
Russian: ENWL(discussions), ENWL-inf(FSU information), ENWL-misc(any topics)
English: ENWL-eng (world information)
en...@lew.spb.org, enwl...@lew.spb.org, en...@lew.spb.org, en...@lew.spb.org
Subscription, Moderator: vf...@lew.spb.org or en...@enw.net.ru
Archive: http://enwl.bellona.ru/pipermail/
and http://groups.google.com/group/enwl/
SEE ALSO: http://www.bellona.org (English)and http://www.bellona.ru
(Russian)
RSS: http://groups.google.ru/group/enwl/feeds?hl=ru
(C) Please refer to exclusive articles of ENWL
-------------------------------------
ONLY if your address is subscribed:
Enwl-eng mailing list
Enwl...@enwl.bellona.ru
http://enwl.bellona.ru/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/enwl-eng