Pollination; an ecosystem service affected by climate change (LAND) (completed)

Increasing our understading on how climate change might affect crop pollination

About the project

The ecosystem service pollination is under threat due to declining populations of pollinators. In this project we will study and how climate change might affect plant-pollinator interactions. We will have a broad focus, including entomophilous crops, managed pollinators (honeybees), wild pollinators and wild plants and address questions related to how these four constituents of the pollination system affect each other.

The project is divided into three parts:

  1. First we will develop best practice/state of the art sampling protocols for gathering data on plant-pollinator interactions. When designing the sampling protocol we will also focus on the structure of the data and how to obtain data tailored for particular statistical analyses suited for answering our scientific questions.
  2. We will then sample plant pollinator interactions within entomophilous crop fields and in surrounding wild plant communities. From the sampled data we will identify important crop pollinators and their temperature sensitivity. We will also be able to address questions on how honeybees affect the wild pollinator community and how wild plant communities affect the pollination of entomophilous crops.
  3. Finally we will apply our sampling protocol in three other biogeographic regions to assess the applicability of the protocol in other systems and to gather data that are directly comparable and can be included in common analyses.

The project is following recommendations for focal areas of future research outlined in two recent publications (Kjøhl et al. 2011, Hegland et al. 2010; see project description for the full references). The project will increase our understanding of crop pollination in general and potential changes under a climate change scenario in particular. The results from the project will be of high value to Norwegian fruit producers in particular, but also to farmers of entomophilous crops world-wide.

Period

Start: 1.2.2014. End: 31.01.2017

Tags: Argentina, Global South
Published May 26, 2014 12:59 PM - Last modified Mar. 6, 2024 3:13 PM

Participants

  • Anders Nielsen Universitetet i Oslo
Detailed list of participants