DOI: 10.5061/dryad.5gn2j
title: Data from: Mitigation of pollen limitation in the lowbush blueberry agroecosystem: effect of augmenting natural pollinators

description: Growers of small fruit crops often supplement the natural pollinator
 community by introducing pollinators into commercial orchards and fields,
 but there are relatively few studies that test the extent to which such
 interventions increase fruit yield. To test whether plants are limited by
 pollen availability, inflorescences in 78 commercial lowbush blueberry
 fields during three years were hand-pollinated either with supplemental
 outcross pollen, or marked and left as controls (open-pollination).
 Maximum fruit set with supplemental pollination was in the range 50–65%,
 whereas with open-pollination, it was slightly, but significantly lower,
 in the range of 47–57%, suggesting that pollen limitation can affect fruit
 set. In a two-year experiment, we augmented native pollinators with
 introduced honey bees, bumble bees, and leaf cutter bees and all
 combinations in 48 fields. Stigmatic pollen loads were influenced by the
 total numbers of managed bees in a field in 2010 but not 2011. The
 presence of leaf cutter bees had a small but positive effect on seed set
 in 2010, and honey bees had a small but negative influence on seed set in
 2011. There was a strong correlation between fruit set reproductive output
 of supplementally pollinated and open-pollinated plants, suggesting that
 plant health or plant resources influence reproductive success.
 Temperature variation among regional groupings of fields was minimal and
 is unlikely to have accounted for differences among fields in fruit set.
 We propose several reasons why, despite pollen-limitation of fruit and
 seed set of blueberry plants, augmentation of the pollinator community of
 lowbush blueberry did not significantly increase reproduction. These
 include pollinator-mediated transfer of self-pollen followed by subsequent
 fruit abortion due to inbreeding depression and resource limitation for
 fruit maturation. Management practices that focus on increasing outcross
 pollen receipt, or plant resources for fruit set may have greater overall
 benefit than pollinator augmentation alone.
description: Mean fruitset of open
 and supplementally pollinated shootsMean field level fruit
 set, sd and n for 78 blueberry fields with pollination treatment. Column
 codes are: Year (2009,2010,2011),Location (Neguac or St. Stephen), Field
 (unique field identifier, Honey (honey bee present or absent),Bumble
 (bumble bee present or absent), Leaf (leaf cutter bee present or absent),
 CFruitset%.mn (mean % fruitset of open pollinated shoots for each field),
 CFruitset.sd (standard deviation fruitset of open pollinated shoots for
 each field) , CFruitset.n (number of open pollinated shoots per field),
 SFruitset%.mn (mean % fruitset of supplementally pollinated shoots for
 each field), SFruitset.sd (standard deviation fruitset of open pollinated
 shoots for each field), SFruitset.n (number of supplementally pollinated
 shoots per field)BlueberryFruitsetAllYearsAllLocations.csvBlueberrySeedsetAllYearsAllLocationsMean field level fruit set, sd and n for 78 blueberry fields with pollination treatment. Column codes are: Year (2009, 2010, 2011), Location (Neguac or St. Stephen), Field (unique field identifiy), Honey (present or absent), Bumble (present or absent), Leaf (present or absent), CSeedset%.mn (mean % seedset of open pollinated shoots for each field), CSeedset.sd (standard deviation of seedset of open pollinated shoots for each field) , CSeedset.n (number of open pollinated shoots per field that seeds were counted for), SSeedset%.mn (mean % seedset of supplementally pollinated shoots for each field), SSeedset.sd (standard deviation seedet of open pollinated shoots for each field), SSeedset.n (number of supplementally pollinated shoots per field)PathAnalysisDataData used in path analysis and figure 3 & 4 of Fulton et al. Column codes are in the readme file. Data set is from 24 fields in Neguac in each of two years.beedistance2010Data from figure 5 Fulton et al. Column codes are: Individual (unique bee identifier) Date (date) Site (field identifier) Bee (species) Flower Number (number of flowers visited by each individual) Inflorescence (number of inflorescences visited) Distance(cm) negtempTemperature data from hobo dataloggers used in fig. 6 in Fulton et al. Data are from 2010 only. Field codes are: Site (field identifier), Day (day of year), Mean (mean recorded temperature), Min (minimum recorded temperature, Max (maximum recorded temperature).