תוצאות חיפוש: האבקה

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 tested whether isolation from florally diverse natural and semi-natural areas reduces the spatial and temporal stability of flower-visitor richness and pollination services in crop fields.

They evaluated the carpenter bee X. pubescens, a local species to Israel, as a pollinator of greenhouse-grown honeydew melons, in comparison to honeybees.

This paper focuses on the large cosmopolitan genus Xylocopa as an additional provider of agricultural pollination services. Aspects of these bees’ life-history, social organization, and foraging ecology are discussed in the context of their potential role as crop pollination agents.

Loss and fragmentation of foraging habitats, and extreme seasonality in the flowering phenology of wild plants, limit honeybee populations in Israel. This problem can be alleviated by the planting of bee forage plants in forests, parks, and along roadsides. To provide recommendations for such planting, they combined a literature survey and qualitative evaluations of experts to compile a list of 266 local wild plant species that have high food potential for bees.

Recent declines in honey bee populations have created deficiencies in agricultural pollination, and motivated the search for alternatives to traditional honey bee colonies. Mini-nucleus colonies (mininucs), small honey bee hives containing a few hundred workers, are easier and cheaper to set up, maintain and transport than regular sized colonies.it was tested whether mininucs can provide effective agricultural pollination in enclosures.

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.