LAND: Pollination; an ecosystem service affected by climate change

In 2016 published one scientific paper (Reitan & Nielsen 2016; open access in PlosOne) where we show how important it is to apply the right distribution when doing statistical tests. Furthermore Andreas Rinvoll have submitted and defended his master project. In his thesis, he showed that pollination activity by honeybees is affected by temperature. He also showed that the high number of honeybees in the raspberry fields excluded wild bees (bumble bees) from this floral resource. A revised version of the thesis is in review in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment. The field season of 2016 focused on wild plant communities. Three master students have been conducting fieldwork along elevation gradients in Norway. Two in Norefjell and one on Reinøya, outside Tromsø. The master thesis from Norefjell will be defended in June 2017 while the one from Reinøya in June 2018.One master student has conducted fieldwork in Argentina in close collaboration with our partner in Buenos Aires. Analyses are under way and the thesis will be defended in November 2017. In 2016, fieldwork was conducted also in Greece, together with our partner on Lesvos. The focus here was crop pollination and temperature sensitivity of different pollinators. In 2015 and 2016 fieldwork was conducted in Australia, by our collaborator in Melbourne. The focus here has been pollinator diversity in urban areas and insect colour perception and how it affects the efficacy of different traps. PolliClim has drawn some attention which has resulted in several requests for holding presentations. This has been done extensively for student, and other, organizations and NFR (Miljø2015 konferansen). The good relation we have to the industry has been maintained and A. Nielsen was invited to give a talk at a conference for Raspberry producers organized by Norsk Landbruksrådgiving (NLR) in Sogndal (2015) and two presentations at NLR Viken (2017).

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, mana ged 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 o f 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 reg ions 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 pu blications (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 resu lts from the project will be of high value to Norwegian fruit producers in particular, but also to farmers of entomophilous crops world-wide.