The first research, done by Rutgers, shows how many more species of bees are required over a longer time horizon to maintain crop yields. According to a study that was just published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, the biodiversity of the bee population is essential to maintaining the ecosystem function of crop pollination, which is essential to the supply of food for humans, according to a study.
Natalie Lemanski, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources at the Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and the study’s lead author, said, “We discovered that biodiversity plays a key role in the stability of ecosystems over time” (SEBS). “In order to get consistent pollination services over a growing season and over years, you actually need more bee species.”
The team that did the study looked at different bee populations on a lot of farms in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and California. They found that pollination took a lot more bee species than they thought it would over a longer period of time, including several years.
The study’s findings included the observation that various bee species pollinate the same kinds of plants at various times of the year. They discovered that various bee species were the primary pollinators of the same type of plant in various years. According to researchers, the presence of all bee species was necessary to maintain a minimum level of pollination during lean years because of the natural fluctuations in bee populations.
According to Michelle Elekonich, deputy division director of the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Biological Sciences, which provided funding for the study, “This biodiversity research shows that bee diversity matters even more than bee abundance [of a species] matters.” Variety is required to maintain balance throughout a growing season and from year to year because it’s not always the same bees that are in abundance at a given time.
The “insurance hypothesis,” a well-established idea among ecologists, is supported by the study, according to Lemanski. According to the theory, ecosystems benefit when nature “diversifies the portfolio,” supporting multiple species of a given plant or animal rather than relying on a single dominant species.
In comparison to a single date, Lemanski said, “we discovered that two to three times as many bee species were needed to meet a target level of crop pollination.” Similar to that, it took twice as many species to provide pollination over the course of six years as it did over one.
The researchers’ in-depth observations of bee visits to flowers and measurements of the amount of pollen grains deposited on specific flowers over the course of weeks and months in a single calendar year, as well as over several years, served as the basis for their analysis. They gathered the data with the consent of the farmers at 36 watermelon farms in the Northern Central Valley of California; 16 blueberry farms in South Jersey; 25 watermelon farms in Central Jersey; and eastern Pennsylvania.
Lemanski stated that when crop systems were taken into account over the same time period, “the magnitude of increase in species needed over multiple years was remarkably consistent.” The fact that the relationship between timescale and the number of species didn’t level off supports the idea that even longer time series that cover more than one season may be needed to make sure biodiversity services are reliable.
The paper’s senior author was Rachael Winfree, a professor in the SEBS at Rutgers Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources. Neal Williams from the University of California-Davis also contributed to the writing of the paper. The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United States Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Agriculture and Food Research Initiative funded this research.
