Baldock, KCR, Goddard, MA orcid.org/0000-0002-2283-6752, Hicks, DM et al. (9 more authors) (2015) Where is the UK's pollinator biodiversity? The importance of urban areas for flower-visiting insects. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 282 (1803). 20142849. ISSN 0962-8452
Abstract
Insect pollinators provide a crucial ecosystem service, but are under threat. Urban areas could be important for pollinators, though their value relative to other habitats is poorly known. We compared pollinator communities using quantified flower-visitation networks in 36 sites (each 1 km²) in three landscapes: urban, farmland and nature reserves. Overall, flower-visitor abundance and species richness did not differ significantly between the three landscape types. Bee abundance did not differ between landscapes, but bee species richness was higher in urban areas than farmland. Hoverfly abundance was higher in farmland and nature reserves than urban sites, but species richness did not differ significantly. While urban pollinator assemblages were more homogeneous across space than those in farmland or nature reserves, there was no significant difference in the numbers of rarer species between the three landscapes. Network-level specialization was higher in farmland than urban sites. Relative to other habitats, urban visitors foraged from a greater number of plant species (higher generality) but also visited a lower proportion of available plant species (higher specialization), both possibly driven by higher urban plant richness. Urban areas are growing, and improving their value for pollinators should be part of any national strategy to conserve and restore pollinators.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2015 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. Reproduced in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | pollinators, networks, urban |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Biology (Leeds) The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number BBSRC (Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council) BB/I000364/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 19 Feb 2018 14:55 |
Last Modified: | 04 Dec 2020 14:26 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Royal Society |
Identification Number: | 10.1098/rspb.2014.2849 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:125889 |