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      Location problem of Osmia cornuta nesting aids for optimum pollination

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      PLoS ONE
      Public Library of Science

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          Abstract

          The economic contribution of insect pollinators is evident as they contribute to higher crop yield quantity and quality. The management of bee species is key to crop production, especially where wild and domesticated bees are in low abundance. Several bee species have been identified as possible candidates for replacing, or at least supplementing, the decreasing number of honey bees. Our research seeks to address the location problem as regards nesting aids for Osmia cornuta bees in orchards using mathematical programming models for determining the optimal location of nesting aids and optimizing the management of solitary bees. A differential evolution algorithm is used to solve a location model of Osmia cornuta nesting aids for optimum pollination. Instead of a random ad hoc location of nesting aids in an orchard, or at the edge of an orchard, we utilize an effective optimization tool to determine locations which will optimize pollination by alternative pollinators, and increase the economic output of an agricultural business. The importance of this proposed model is likely to increase with agricultural intensification, and the decrease of the numbers of wild pollinators.

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          Crop pollination from native bees at risk from agricultural intensification.

          Ecosystem services are critical to human survival; in selected cases, maintaining these services provides a powerful argument for conserving biodiversity. Yet, the ecological and economic underpinnings of most services are poorly understood, impeding their conservation and management. For centuries, farmers have imported colonies of European honey bees (Apis mellifera) to fields and orchards for pollination services. These colonies are becoming increasingly scarce, however, because of diseases, pesticides, and other impacts. Native bee communities also provide pollination services, but the amount they provide and how this varies with land management practices are unknown. Here, we document the individual species and aggregate community contributions of native bees to crop pollination, on farms that varied both in their proximity to natural habitat and management type (organic versus conventional). On organic farms near natural habitat, we found that native bee communities could provide full pollination services even for a crop with heavy pollination requirements (e.g., watermelon, Citrullus lanatus), without the intervention of managed honey bees. All other farms, however, experienced greatly reduced diversity and abundance of native bees, resulting in insufficient pollination services from native bees alone. We found that diversity was essential for sustaining the service, because of year-to-year variation in community composition. Continued degradation of the agro-natural landscape will destroy this "free" service, but conservation and restoration of bee habitat are potentially viable economic alternatives for reducing dependence on managed honey bees.
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            Parallel declines in pollinators and insect-pollinated plants in Britain and the Netherlands.

            Despite widespread concern about declines in pollination services, little is known about the patterns of change in most pollinator assemblages. By studying bee and hoverfly assemblages in Britain and the Netherlands, we found evidence of declines (pre-versus post-1980) in local bee diversity in both countries; however, divergent trends were observed in hoverflies. Depending on the assemblage and location, pollinator declines were most frequent in habitat and flower specialists, in univoltine species, and/or in nonmigrants. In conjunction with this evidence, outcrossing plant species that are reliant on the declining pollinators have themselves declined relative to other plant species. Taken together, these findings strongly suggest a causal connection between local extinctions of functionally linked plant and pollinator species.
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              Insect Declines in the Anthropocene

              Insect declines are being reported worldwide for flying, ground, and aquatic lineages. Most reports come from western and northern Europe, where the insect fauna is well-studied and there are considerable demographic data for many taxonomically disparate lineages. Additional cases of faunal losses have been noted from Asia, North America, the Arctic, the Neotropics, and elsewhere. While this review addresses both species loss and population declines, its emphasis is on the latter. Declines of abundant species can be especially worrisome, given that they anchor trophic interactions and shoulder many of the essential ecosystem services of their respective communities. A review of the factors believed to be responsible for observed collapses and those perceived to be especially threatening to insects form the core of this treatment. In addition to widely recognized threats to insect biodiversity, e.g., habitat destruction, agricultural intensification (including pesticide use), climate change, and invasive species, this assessment highlights a few less commonly considered factors such as atmospheric nitrification from the burning of fossil fuels and the effects of droughts and changing precipitation patterns. Because the geographic extent and magnitude of insect declines are largely unknown, there is an urgent need for monitoring efforts, especially across ecological gradients, which will help to identify important causal factors in declines. This review also considers the status of vertebrate insectivores, reporting bias, challenges inherent in collecting and interpreting insect demographic data, and cases of increasing insect abundance.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: Funding acquisitionRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: Project administrationRole: ResourcesRole: SoftwareRole: SupervisionRole: ValidationRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: Funding acquisitionRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: Project administrationRole: ResourcesRole: SoftwareRole: SupervisionRole: ValidationRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: ConceptualizationRole: Data curationRole: Formal analysisRole: Funding acquisitionRole: InvestigationRole: MethodologyRole: Project administrationRole: ResourcesRole: SoftwareRole: SupervisionRole: ValidationRole: VisualizationRole: Writing – original draftRole: Writing – review & editing
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS One
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )
                1932-6203
                31 December 2020
                2020
                : 15
                : 12
                : e0244610
                Affiliations
                [001]Faculty of Economic Informatics, Department of Operations Research and Econometrics, University of Economics in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia
                Univerza v Mariboru, SLOVENIA
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4064-704X
                Article
                PONE-D-20-30891
                10.1371/journal.pone.0244610
                7774959
                33382818
                c722abab-422a-437e-a48b-fef3896d0059
                © 2020 Pekár et al

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 1 October 2020
                : 14 December 2020
                Page count
                Figures: 5, Tables: 0, Pages: 19
                Funding
                Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100003194, Agentúra Ministerstva Školstva, Vedy, Výskumu a Športu SR;
                Award ID: 1/0339/20
                Award Recipient :
                The Grant Agency of the Slovak Republic supported this work – VEGA grant no. 1/0339/20 https://www.minedu.sk/about-the-ministry/ The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Agriculture
                Farms
                Orchards
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Physiology
                Plant Physiology
                Pollination
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Plant Science
                Plant Physiology
                Pollination
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Zoology
                Entomology
                Insects
                Hymenoptera
                Bees
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Organisms
                Eukaryota
                Animals
                Invertebrates
                Arthropoda
                Insects
                Hymenoptera
                Bees
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Zoology
                Animals
                Invertebrates
                Arthropoda
                Insects
                Hymenoptera
                Bees
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Zoology
                Entomology
                Insects
                Hymenoptera
                Bees
                Honey Bees
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Organisms
                Eukaryota
                Animals
                Invertebrates
                Arthropoda
                Insects
                Hymenoptera
                Bees
                Honey Bees
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Zoology
                Animals
                Invertebrates
                Arthropoda
                Insects
                Hymenoptera
                Bees
                Honey Bees
                Physical Sciences
                Mathematics
                Applied Mathematics
                Algorithms
                Evolutionary Algorithms
                Research and Analysis Methods
                Simulation and Modeling
                Algorithms
                Evolutionary Algorithms
                Research and Analysis Methods
                Computational Techniques
                Evolutionary Computation
                Evolutionary Algorithms
                Physical Sciences
                Mathematics
                Optimization
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Organisms
                Eukaryota
                Plants
                Fruits
                Biology and Life Sciences
                Agriculture
                Crop Science
                Crops
                Custom metadata
                All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting information files.

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