Pollination of exotic fruit crops depends more on extant pollinators and landscape structure than on local management of domestic bees

Agricultural globalization has driven the expansion of exotic crops into new agricultural areas. Pollinator-dependent exotic crops not only have to face the abiotic constraints of the new cultivation regions but also deal with local pollinator assemblages, which may or may not fulfill pollination requirements. Here, we studied how three entomophilous exotic crops (kiwifruit, northern highbush blueberry and rabbiteye blueberry) adapt to a common pollination environment in new cultivation areas in Spain. For this, we assessed the pollination limitation of those crops, the contribution of insect assemblages to the pollination service, and the effect of landscape structure and the management of domestic pollinators on these assemblages. The three exotic crops showed large and diverse pollinator assemblages but differed in the assemblage composition and in the identity of the main pollinator species. Honeybee clearly dominated kiwifruit assemblages, representing almost 70 % of visits to flowers. Bumblebees and honeybee fairly equally dominated floral visits in highbush blueberry, and bumblebees accounted for more than 90% of visits in rabbiteye blueberry. Floral morphology partially explained interspecific differences in pollinator assemblages and led to the distinct contributions of the different insects to the different crops. Kiwifruit (but not blueberry) crops experienced pollination limitation that led to, on average, a 7.2 % reduction in fruit weight. This pollination limitation decreased when honeybee abundance rose. In all three crops, the local pollinator assemblages mostly depended on the landscape structure around orchards but were only affected by the management of domestic pollinators in rabbiteye blueberry crops. Our results highlight the importance of understanding the interspecific differences in the pollination ecology of new exotic crops before designing general management recommendations, and also question the use of managed pollinators before making an assessment of the contribution of extant insects to the pollination service.

This work was supported by MinECo/MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/FEDER Grants E-RTA2013-00072-C03, RTA2017-00051-C02-01, GRUPIN IDI/2018/000151 y PID2020-120239RR-100.

Peer reviewed