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Indicators of Pollinator Decline and Pollen Limitation

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Environmental Indicators

Abstract

Pollination is a crucial process for maintaining plant reproduction, and is responsible to the yield of about two third of the world’s crops. In recent years, there are growing concerns over pollinator declines and global pollination crisis. A decrease in pollinator populations also affects plants’ reproductive success, and alters the composition of wild plant communities. The main drivers for pollination decline are agriculture intensification and the subsequent fragmentation and loss of habitats, as well as introduction of non-native species and indirect effects of global climate change. Specialist pollinators and self-incompatible plants are seemingly in higher vulnerability. Our current knowledge of environmental effects on pollination processes is limited by the relatively little knowledge of the ecological requirements of pollinators and plants, and by the shortage of studies on the response of populations and communities to changes in land use. In this chapter we provide indices for estimating pollinator decline in both local and landscape scale, and discuss the relative efficiency of taxonomic and environmental indicators and indicators for estimating pollination services. We propose that future research should include developing and testing cost-effectiveness of indicators for patterns of pollinators’ diversity and of indicators for pollination services. These indicators should be tested in various ecological and spatial scales.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Robert Armon and Osmo Hänninen for the invitation to write this chapter. Studies related to this chapter were supported by the Israel Science Foundation (YS and AD, YM), the Nekudat Hen program for promoting agricultural – Ecological projects (YS and AD, YM), and Porter School for Environmental Studies at Tel Aviv University (YS).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Botanical Garden, Department of Molecular Biology and Ecology of Plants, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Yuval Sapir

  2. Department of Zoology, Zoological Museum (TAUZM), Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Achik Dorchin

  3. Department of Entomology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 12, Rehovot, 76100, Israel

    Yael Mandelik

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  1. Yuval Sapir
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  2. Achik Dorchin
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  3. Yael Mandelik
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Correspondence to Yuval Sapir .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Civil and Environmental Engineering, Israel Institute of Technology Technion, Haifa, Israel

    Robert H. Armon

  2. Department of Physiology, Institute of Biomedicine, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland

    Osmo Hänninen

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Sapir, Y., Dorchin, A., Mandelik, Y. (2015). Indicators of Pollinator Decline and Pollen Limitation. In: Armon, R., Hänninen, O. (eds) Environmental Indicators. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9499-2_8

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