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      Expansion of mass-flowering crops leads to transient pollinator dilution and reduced wild plant pollination

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          Abstract

          Agricultural land use results in direct biodiversity decline through loss of natural habitat, but may also cause indirect cross-habitat effects on conservation areas. We conducted three landscape-scale field studies on 67 sites to test the hypothesis that mass flowering of oilseed rape ( Brassica napus) results in a transient dilution of bees in crop fields, and in increased competition between crop plants and grassland plants for pollinators. Abundances of bumble-bees, which are the main pollinators of the grassland plant Primula veris, but also pollinate oilseed rape (OSR), decreased with increasing amount of OSR. This landscape-scale dilution affected bumble-bee abundances strongly in OSR fields and marginally in grasslands, where bumble-bee abundances were generally low at the time of Primula flowering. Seed set of Primula veris, which flowers during OSR bloom, was reduced by 20 per cent when the amount of OSR within 1 km radius increased from 0 to 15 per cent. Hence, the current expansion of bee-attractive biofuel crops results in transient dilution of crop pollinators, which means an increased competition for pollinators between crops and wild plants. In conclusion, mass-flowering crops potentially threaten fitness of concurrently flowering wild plants in conservation areas, despite the fact that, in the long run, mass-flowering crops can enhance abundances of generalist pollinators and their pollination service.

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          Most cited references43

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          Effects of Habitat Fragmentation on Biodiversity

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            Human Domination of Earth's Ecosystems

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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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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Proc Biol Sci
                RSPB
                royprsb
                Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
                The Royal Society
                0962-8452
                1471-2954
                22 November 2011
                6 April 2011
                6 April 2011
                : 278
                : 1723
                : 3444-3451
                Affiliations
                [1 ]simpleAgroecology, Department of Crop Sciences, Georg-August University , Grisebachstr. 6, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
                [2 ]Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, simpleBiocenter, University of Würzburg , Am Hubland, 97074 Würzburg, Germany
                [3 ]Department of Computational Landscape Ecology, UFZ Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Permoserstraße 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany
                Author notes
                [* ]Author for correspondence ( andrea.holzschuh@ 123456uni-wuerzburg.de ).
                Article
                rspb20110268
                10.1098/rspb.2011.0268
                3177631
                21471115
                f7165378-3614-413e-baa2-ec30d9b44069
                This journal is © 2011 The Royal Society

                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 work is properly cited.

                History
                : 7 February 2011
                : 11 March 2011
                Categories
                1001
                60
                Research Articles

                Life sciences
                pollination,competition,spill-over,canola,facilitation,oilseed rape
                Life sciences
                pollination, competition, spill-over, canola, facilitation, oilseed rape

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