Wild insect diversity increases inter-annual stability in global crop pollinator communities.

While an increasing number of studies indicate that the range, diversity and abundance of many wild pollinators has declined, the global area of pollinator-dependent crops has significantly increased over the last few decades. Crop pollination studies to date have mainly focused on either identifying different guilds pollinating various crops, or on factors driving spatial changes and turnover observed in these communities. The mechanisms driving temporal stability for ecosystem functioning and services, however, remain poorly understood. Our study quantifies temporal variability observed in crop pollinators in 21 different crops across multiple years at a global scale. Using data from 43 studies from six continents, we show that (i) higher pollinator diversity confers greater inter-annual stability in pollinator communities, (ii) temporal variation observed in pollinator abundance is primarily driven by the three-most dominant species, and (iii) crops in tropical regions demonstrate higher inter-annual variability in pollinator species richness than crops in temperate regions. We highlight the importance of recognizing wild pollinator diversity in agricultural landscapes to stabilize pollinator persistence across years to protect both biodiversity and crop pollination services. Short-term agricultural management practices aimed at dominant species for stabilizing pollination services need to be considered alongside longer term conservation goals focussed on maintaining and facilitating biodiversity to confer ecological stability.

A global synthesis reveals biodiversity-mediated benefits for crop production.

Human land use threatens global biodiversity and compromises multiple ecosystem functions critical to food production. Whether crop yield-related ecosystem services can be maintained by a few dominant species or rely on high richness remains unclear. Using a global database from 89 studies (with 1475 locations), we partition the relative importance of species richness, abundance, and dominance for pollination; biological pest control; and final yields in the context of ongoing land-use change. Pollinator and enemy richness directly supported ecosystem services in addition to and independent of abundance and dominance. Up to 50% of the negative effects of landscape simplification on ecosystem services was due to richness losses of service-providing organisms, with negative consequences for crop yields. Maintaining the biodiversity of ecosystem service providers is therefore vital to sustain the flow of key agroecosystem benefits to society.

Data relating to threats to passion fruit production in the Neotropics due to agricultural area loss and pollinator mismatch as consequence of climate changes.

The data in this article are associated with the research article 'Agricultural area losses and pollinator mismatch due to climate changes endanger passion fruit production in the Neotropics' (A.D. Bezerra et al. 2019). The data consists of the occurrence points, AUC scores models, presence and absence and co-occurrence maps of the passion fruit (Passiflora edulis) crop and its pollinators, Xylocopa bees (Xylocopa frontalis and Xylocopa grisescens), in current and future scenarios (RPC 4.5 and 8.5, in the years 2060 and 2080) in the Neotropics. Data was obtained though literature review (articles, systematic surveys, dissertation and thesis), as well as systematic searches in entomological collections available in data portals provided by the SpeciesLink and Global Biodiversity Information Facility - GIBF, and analyses by the MaxEnt algorithm and binary transformation. Occurrence error points that did not represent the actual spatial distribution of the species were removed to obtain the current occurrence points and data analyses proved good performance of models for all prediction scenarios. The data-generated maps of pollinators and crop occurrence and co-occurrence also show how climate change may impact the spatial distribution of pollinators and potential losses of this crop's agricultural areas.

Oil collecting bees and Byrsonima cydoniifolia A. Juss. (Malpighiaceae) interactions: the prevalence of long-distance cross pollination driving reproductive success.

Oil-collecting bees are the natural pollinators of oil-flower plants, but little is known about the pollination process and the effectiveness of their pollination service to the reproductive success of their host plants. In species of Byrsonima the reproductive system have been described as auto-compatible or self-incompatible. We studied the reproductive system of Byrsonima cydoniifolia, the fructification by means of short, medium and long-distance cross pollinations, the morphology and floral biology and the pollination interactions with species of oil-collecting bees. By means of controlled pollinations we found self-incompatibility caused by abortion of most self-pollinated flowers and demonstrated that the prevailing cross pollination ensuring the reproductive success of B. cydoniifolia is the long-distance cross pollination and Centridini bees; Epicharis nigrita, particularly, are the pollinators promoting the gene flow between genetically distinct populations.