תוצאות חיפוש: יעל מנדליק

תקציר מתוך חוברת התקצירים של המארג: יום עיון שירותי המערכת האקולוגית בישראל – 2012

In this study, they investigated the existence of pollinator complementarity in both visitation rates and pollination efficiencies.

Wild pollinators, bees in particular, may greatly contribute to crop pollination and provide a safety net against declines in commercial pollinators. However, the identity, life history traits, and environmental sensitivities of main crop pollinator species have received limited attention. They sampled wild bees in three crop systems in a mosaic Israeli Mediterranean landscape.

It was studied whether vertebrates and their impact in crop seed predation are related to the percentage of natural (chaparral) and semi-natural habitat (planted forest with native and exotic trees) in an agricultural landscape of Israel.

It was tested how natural and semi-natural habitats surrounding almond orchards in Israel influence: pest control services by parasitoids, pest predation dis-services by the Almond wasp, and seed predation dis-services by granivorous birds.

There is compelling evidence that more diverse ecosystems deliver greater benefits to people, and these ecosystem services have become a key argument for biodiversity conservation. However, it is unclear how much biodiversity is needed to deliver ecosystem services in a cost-effective way. Here they show that, while the contribution of wild bees to crop production is significant, service delivery is restricted to a limited subset of all known bee species. 

Insect pollination is essential for almond production, and most growers rely exclusively on honeybees for pollination. However, the number of honeybee hives has declined drastically over the last few decades and their efficiency in pollinating almond might be limited. Wild bee communities inhabiting the habitats surrounding almond orchards may provide significant pollination services to almond, but this has yet to be studied. 

Complementarity between species in the use of flower resources can enhance the pollination services of diverse pollinator communities. To test for complementarity, they studied fine-scale patterns of flower visitation and contribution to seed set of the three locally dominant bee species, visiting confection, sunflower in central Israel.

Bees provide essential pollination services that are potentially affected both by local farm management and the surrounding landscape. To better understand these different factors, they modelled the relative effects of landscape composition , landscape configuration and farm management, and their interactions, on wild bee abundance and richness for 39 crop systems globally.