Interannual differences in pollinator contributions to pollen transfer are mainly driven by changes in pollinator abundance.

ABSTRACT: With the rising threat to insect pollinators and the upcoming pollinator crisis, it is important to know how pollinators contribute to pollen transfer. The contributions of individual pollinator taxa to pollen transfer depend both on their abundance and on how much pollen each individual can carry, with overall importance being a multiplication of these two values. Here, we quantified pollen load across a diverse spectrum of insect pollinator taxa and variation in their abundance over 11 years. We found that, while variation in pollen load was relatively small among pollinator taxa (compared to relatively high variability among individuals within each insect taxon), the visitation levels changed significantly over the years, resulting in a high degree of variation in pollinator contributio

SUBMITTER: Freudenfeld M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12000867 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature