Abstract
Provisioning of additional forage, often in the form of flower-strips, has been proposed to mitigate pollinator declines and benefit crop pollination. However, there is little evidence of effects of such measures on pollinator populations. Flower-strips may attract pollinators rather than benefit populations, may not provide resources at appropriate scales, or may incidentally change pollinator community composition. The aim of this project is to increase the understanding of how pollinator mitigation measures affect differently mobile pollinators, to be able to better propose how and where to mitigate pollinator declines to enhance crop pollination. Specifically we will: - Determine if pollinator species differ in their ability to adjust forage use and spatial scale of foraging to differences in land-use in time and space; - Empirically determine the spatial scale at which pollinator mitigation measures affect the fitness of differently mobil pollinators; - Experimentally test if addition of flower resources can be determimental to some pollinator species through indirect effects such as inter-specific competition. The results will complement ongoing studies relating pollinator communities to landscape structure and feed into model development aimed at predicting consequences of pollinator mitigation on pollination.
Sweden