The Nagoya Protocol (2010) demonstrated that Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEA) are still achievable. Pollination services are essential for biodiversity, agriculture, ecosystem services and human well-being, but in jeopardy as The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) confirmed. In 2016, thirteen mostly European countries established the Coalition of the Willing on Pollinators. This group of forerunners increased to twenty-one members. Recently, the European Union (EU) decided to join in 2018. What would be necessary to move forward towards a Multilateral Environmental Agreement for pollinator protection during the next three or four Conferences of the Parties (COP) of the Convention for Biological Diversity (CBD)? Current approaches for pollinator protection mostly require subsidies or donations, they are not scalable and might limit the number of countries promoting a multilateral agreement.This paper suggests a mix of four strategies and low-cost policy measures across sectors. They would be affordable even for Low Income Countries (LIC), but require addressing certain research gaps to set the stage for policymakers.

Human land use threatens global biodiversity and compromises multiple ecosystem functions critical to food production. Whether crop yield–related ecosystem services can be maintained by a few dominant species or rely on high richness remains unclear. Using a global database from 89 studies (with 1475 locations), we partition the relative importance of species richness, abundance, and dominance for pollination; biological pest control; and final yields in the context of ongoing land-use change. Pollinator and enemy richness directly supported ecosystem services in addition to and independent of abundance and dominance. Up to 50% of the negative effects of landscape simplification on ecosystem services was due to richness losses of service-providing organisms, with negative consequences for crop yields. Maintaining the biodiversity of ecosystem service providers is therefore vital to sustain the flow of key agroecosystem benefits to society.

Ecosystem services have received increasing attention in life sciences, but only a limited amount of quantitative data are available concerning the ability of weeds to provide these services. Following an expert focus group on this topic, a systematic search for articles displaying evidence of weeds providing regulating ecosystem services was performed, resulting in 129 articles. The most common service found was pest control and the prevailing mechanism was that weeds provide a suitable habitat for natural enemies. Other articles showed that weeds improved soil nutrient content, soil physical properties and crop pollinator abundance. Weeds were found to provide some important ecosystem services for agriculture, but only a small number of studies presented data on crop yield. Experimental approaches are proposed that can: (i) disentangle the benefits obtained from ecosystem services provisioning from the costs due to weed competition and (ii) quantify the contribution of diverse weed communities in reducing crop competition and in providing ecosystem services. Existing vegetation databases can be used to select weed species with functional traits facilitating ecosystem service provisioning while having a lower competitive capacity. However, for services such as pest control, there are hardly any specific plant traits that have been identified and more fundamental research is needed.

Rangeland management strategies impact biodiversity, the quality and quantity of ecosystem services, and overall rangeland resiliency. Previous management strategies, coupled with climate change, have led to widespread invasion by Kentucky bluegrass (Poa pratensis; bluegrass) in the Northern Great Plains, United States. Bluegrass invasions are expected to have detrimental impacts on biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services provided by rangelands. Yet none have investigated how bluegrass invasions influence pollinator populations, which are a prominent conservation concern and provide ecosystem services. We measured the impact of bluegrass invasion on mixed-grass prairie forb and butterfly communities. Obligate grassland butterflies, those that rely on grasslands, decreased as bluegrass cover increased, including the threatened Hesperia dacotae. Conversely, the abundance of facultative grassland butterflies, those found in grasslands but not fully dependent on them for their life history, increased as bluegrass increased. Moreover, plant species diversity and flowering forb species richness decreased as bluegrass cover increased. Overall, bluegrass invasion led to butterfly and plant community simplification, signaling a loss of biodiversity and potentially ecosystem services. Our research is the first to quantify how grassland butterflies and the floral resources they depend on are negatively impacted by bluegrass invasion. Resource managers should adopt management strategies that reduce bluegrass cover and improve nectar and host resources for obligate grassland butterflies. Management choices that removed disturbance regimes inherent to the Northern Great Plains (i.e., fire and grazing) led to bluegrass dominance in the region. Therefore, restoring disturbance regimes may be one way to reduce bluegrass and benefit pollinator populations.

The sustainability of agriculture can be improved by integrating management of ecosystem services, such as insect pollination, into farming practices. However, large‐scale adoption of ecosystem services‐based practices in agriculture is lacking, possibly because growers undervalue the benefits of ecosystem services compared to those of conventional management practices. Here we show that, under representative real‐world conditions, pollination and plant quality made similar contributions to marketable seed yield of hybrid leek (Allium porrum). Relative to the median, a 25% improvement of plant quality and pollination increased crop value by an estimated $18 007 and $17 174 ha−1 respectively. Across five crop lines, bumblebees delivered most pollination services, while other wild pollinator groups made less frequent but nevertheless substantial contributions. Honeybees actively managed for pollination services did not make significant contributions. Our results show that wild pollinators are an undervalued agricultural input and managing for enhancing pollinators makes sense economically in high‐revenue insect‐pollinated cropping systems.

The sustainability of agriculture can be improved by integrating management of ecosystem services, such as insect pollination, into farming practices. However, large‐scale adoption of ecosystem services‐based practices in agriculture is lacking, possibly because growers undervalue the benefits of ecosystem services compared to those of conventional management practices. Here we show that, under representative real‐world conditions, pollination and plant quality made similar contributions to marketable seed yield of hybrid leek (Allium porrum). Relative to the median, a 25% improvement of plant quality and pollination increased crop value by an estimated $18 007 and $17 174 ha⁻¹ respectively. Across five crop lines, bumblebees delivered most pollination services, while other wild pollinator groups made less frequent but nevertheless substantial contributions. Honeybees actively managed for pollination services did not make significant contributions. Our results show that wild pollinators are an undervalued agricultural input and managing for enhancing pollinators makes sense economically in high‐revenue insect‐pollinated cropping systems.

Climate change can alter species interactions essential for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem function, such as pollination. Understanding the interactive effects of multiple abiotic conditions on floral traits and pollinator visitation are important to anticipate the implications of climate change on pollinator services. Floral visual and olfactory traits were measured from individuals of four forb species subjected to drought or normal water availability, and elevated or ambient concentrations of CO₂ in a factorial design. Pollinator visitation rates and community composition were observed in single‐species and multi‐species forb assemblages. Drought decreased floral visual traits and pollinator visitation rates but increased volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions, whereas elevated CO₂ positively affected floral visual traits, VOC emissions and pollinator visitation rates. There was little evidence of interactive effects of drought and CO₂ on floral traits and pollinator visitation. Interestingly, the effects of climate treatments on pollinator visitation depended on whether plants were in single‐ or multi‐species assemblages. Components of climate change altered floral traits and pollinator visitation, but effects were modulated by plant community context. Investigating the response of floral traits, including VOCs, and context‐dependency of pollinator attraction provides additional insights and may aid in understanding the overall effects of climate change on plant–pollinator interactions.

Wild animals substantially support crop production by providing ecosystem services, such as pollination and natural pest control. However, the strengths of synergies between ecosystem services and their dependencies on land-use management are largely unknown. Here, we took an experimental approach to test the impact of land-use intensification on both individual and combined pollination and pest control services in coffee production systems at Mount Kilimanjaro. We established a full-factorial pollinator and vertebrate exclosure experiment along a land-use gradient from traditional homegardens (agroforestry systems), shaded coffee plantations to sun coffee plantations (total sample size = 180 coffee bushes). The exclusion of vertebrates led to a reduction in fruit set of ca 9%. Pollinators did not affect fruit set, but significantly increased fruit weight of coffee by an average of 7.4%. We found no significant decline of these ecosystem services along the land-use gradient. Pest control and pollination service were thus complementary, contributing to coffee production by affecting the quantity and quality of a major tropical cash crop across different coffee production systems at Mount Kilimanjaro.

BACKGROUND: Agricultural intensification has contributed to increased diffuse source pollution within water catchments, reduced heterogeneity within the landscape and caused major declines in farmland wildlife. This decrease in biodiversity has been shown to decrease vital ecosystem services such as pollination, biological pest control (bio-control) and water quality protection. The morphological traits of plant species, such as floral display size and leaf area, provide support to these services and vegetative strips can be established with plants that have these desirable traits to try and restore ecosystem service support to farmland. Vegetative strips are widely used across the world, especially in Europe, however, there is a need to increase their functionality due to issues of land availability and food security. To do this, combinations of plant species that will support specific ecosystem services, have been developed. However, to enable a fully-informed development process, evidence must be collated on which specific plant traits provide the support to the target ecosystem services. The primary objective of this study was to systematically map all evidence for specific plant traits that may provide support for pollinators, bio-control and water quality protection in temperate climates. METHODS: Both published and grey literature were obtained through databases and NGO websites using key search terms. An initial 34,077 articles were identified with a total of 11,705 individual articles, after duplicates were removed. These were screened for inclusion based on criteria such as subject, climate and language. Each article was coded into a Microsoft Access database using generic (e.g. author, publication date, study length) and topic specific (e.g. target system, organism and ecosystem service) keywords. RESULTS: After screening 56 articles were coded into the systematic map. A total of 40 articles identified 37 plant traits for pollinator support, seven identified eight traits for bio-control and nine identified 26 for water quality protection. All articles were published between 1983 and 2017 and they included studies that were undertaken in 22 different countries. DISCUSSION: This systematic mapping process produced a searchable database of literature available on plant traits and the target ecosystem services. It has highlighted that more research has been conducted on plant traits for pollinator support than for bio-control and water quality protection, identifying potential research gaps in these areas. Evidence presented in this map could inform decisions related to the suitability of plant species for inclusion within multifunctional vegetative strips, providing targeted ecosystem services. This information could be used by policy makers to develop an option that could benefit landowners and farmland wildlife concurrently.