What Happens When We Lose One Species of Pollinators?

In field experiments in the Rockies, scientists discovered the cascade effect on an ecosystem that lost just one pollinator species.

“We see an ecological cascade of effects across the whole pollinator community, fundamentally changing the structure of plant-pollinator interaction networks,” says Berry Brosi, a biologist at Emory University and author of the study published in Biology Letters. “We can see this shift in who visits which plant even in pollinators that are not closely related to the bumblebee species that we remove from the system.”

When the plant is no longer crowded with its dominant pollinators and nectar is abundant, other types of pollinators will move in to gather that nectar, leaving other, more rare plants that these pollinators visit, to be neglected.  This leads to less successful plant reproduction of the rarer plants.

So along with the extinction of certain pollinator populations, it has been posited that there will also be a decline in certain rare species of plants.

Read more here:  https://www.beeculture.com/catch-buzz-field-experiments-show-removing-pollinator-species-disrupts-foraging-patterns/?utm_source=Catch+The+Buzz&utm_campaign=764bc9c5d0-Catch_The_Buzz_4_29_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0272f190ab-764bc9c5d0-256243817

pollinators #bees #honeybees #biology #extinction #savethebees #ecosystem