DOI: 10.5061/dryad.2rbnzs7t2
title: Data from: What makes a good pollinator? Abundant and specialized insects with long flight periods transport the most strawberry pollen

description: Despite the importance of insect pollination to produce marketable fruits,
 insect pollination management is limited by insufficient knowledge about
 key crop pollinator species. This lack of knowledge is due in part to: 1)
 the extensive labour involved in collecting direct observations of
 pollen-transport, 2) the variability of insect assemblages over space and
 time, and 3) the possibility that pollinators may need access to wild
 plants as well as crop floral resources. We address these problems using
 strawberry in the UK as a case study. First, we compare two proxies for
 estimating pollinator importance: flower visits and pollen transport.
 Pollen-transport data might provide a closer approximation of pollination
 service, but visitation data are less time-consuming to collect. Second,
 we identify insect parameters that are associated with high importance as
 pollinators, estimated using each of the proxies above. Third, we
 estimated insects' use of wild plants as well as the strawberry crop.
 Overall, pollinator importances estimated based on easier-to-collect
 visitation data were strongly correlated with importances estimated based
 on pollen loads. Both frameworks suggest that bees Apis and Bombus and
 hoverflies Eristalis are likely to be key pollinators of strawberries,
 although visitation data underestimate the importance of bees. Moving
 beyond species identities, abundant, relatively specialised insects with
 long active periods are likely to provide more pollination
 service.    Most insects visiting strawberry plants also
 carried pollen from wild plants, suggesting that pollinators need diverse
 floral resources. Identifying essential pollinators or pollinator
 parameters based on visitation data will reach the same general
 conclusions as those using pollen transport data, at least in monoculture
 crop systems. Managers may be able to enhance pollination service by
 preserving habitats surrounding crop fields to complement
 pollinators' diets and provide habitats for diverse life stages of
 wild pollinators.
description: Data was collected in June 2009 in three different farms in
 Somerset, UK.  SPECIFICATIONS OF METHODS:
 Insects were collected within transects using a hand
 net. Plant species were identified in the field while
 insect species were identified by Taxonomy experts (see paper).
 Bumblebee queens were identified in the field and
 released.  Information on inter-tegument distance was
 taken from: Baldock, K.C., Goddard, M.A., Hicks, D.M., Kunin,
 W.E., Mitschunas, N., Morse, H., Osgathorpe, L.M., Potts, S.G., Robertson, K.M., Scott, A.V.,
 Staniczenko, P.P., Stone, G.N., Vaughan, I.P. & Memmott,
 J. (2019) A systems approach
 reveals urban pollinator hotspots and conservation
 opportunities. Nature
 Ecology and
 Evolution 3,
 363–373, 10.1038/s41559-018-0769-y. 
 Hackett, T.D., Sauve, A.M.C.,
 Davies, N., Montoya, D., Tylianakis, J.M. & Memmott, J. (2019)
 Re-shaping our understanding of species’ roles in landscape-scale
 networks. Ecology Letters 22,
 1367–1377,44010.1111/ele.13292.