POLLINATOR SCIENCE
W
e’re in the midst of an accelerating climate crisis. And it can be hard to know how to curb its effects. How can we help our planet adapt and survive as average temperatures
continue to rise and weather patterns become more erratic? against climate change. Three-quarters of the world’s most widely grown crops need animals to ensure at least part of their yields of seeds and fruit, and almost 90 percent of the 352,000 species of our diets would be far less diverse, some farmers would suffer reduced incomes, and we would lose much of the wild biodiversity of our planet. This biodiversity, in turn, supports our societies, through ways both tangible (in agriculture for instance) and intangible, for example the ways in which it inspires art and culture. As the recent UK Government- instigated Dasgupta Review of Te Economics of Biodiversity measurable services to GDP are of negligible worth.”
of our age as the warming of our planet continues to have a profound effect on both human society and natural ecosystems. The ongoing degradation of natural habitats and the loss of biodiversity, often termed the ecological emergency, is no less important, but often overshadowed by climate change in political discussions and business decision making. Stopping the extraction of and our dependence on fossil fuels is the most important element for preventing further damage from climate change, of course. But if we are going to reverse the current effects of global warming, we need to 2
from the atmosphere.
And if we can’t do that then society, especially agriculture, and biodiversity must adapt. In both of these scenarios–drawdown of carbon dioxide and future adaptation–pollinators have fundamentally important parts to play.
Pollinators Sustain Plant Populations Pollinators ensure that plant populations persist, locking up carbon in their leaves, stems, roots, tubers, and bulbs. There’s been much talk of reforesting great swathes of natural habitats across the planet. Project Drawdown (https://
drawdown.org) ranks tropical reforestation as one of the top greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop climbing and start to steadily decline.” Temperate forest restoration can also help stem
Above: Climate change is a growing issue that challenges our way of life. How will we adapt to warming temperatures? Opposite: Many crops like oilseed rape, also known as canola, require pollination to increase yields. © Jeff Ollerton
in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, allowing forest vegetation to naturally regenerate, from seeds, and dormant roots and stumps, is by far the best way to ensure that plants survive, and the restoration is successful. A team from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew point out the importance of the mutualistic relationships between species involving mycorrhizal fungi, seed dispersal, Take a walk through a temperate forest in Europe, Asia,
or North America and you will hardly notice the pollinators except in the early part of the season when they are pollinating the understory bulbs and herbaceous plants. Appearance might thus suggest that pollinators are not important in up in the canopy.
In Britain and Ireland most of our larger trees, such as oaks and beeches, are wind pollinated, but the smaller trees and large shrubs are pollinated by insects. Indeed 70 percent of native British tree species require insect pollination. As I’ve published with colleagues in the last decade shows that up to 100 percent of the mega-diverse plant communities in tropical wet forests are pollinated by insects and vertebrates such as birds and bats. Even in grasslands, where the grasses may dominate by abundance,
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