Review
Global pollinator declines: trends, impacts and drivers

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2010.01.007Get rights and content

Pollinators are a key component of global biodiversity, providing vital ecosystem services to crops and wild plants. There is clear evidence of recent declines in both wild and domesticated pollinators, and parallel declines in the plants that rely upon them. Here we describe the nature and extent of reported declines, and review the potential drivers of pollinator loss, including habitat loss and fragmentation, agrochemicals, pathogens, alien species, climate change and the interactions between them. Pollinator declines can result in loss of pollination services which have important negative ecological and economic impacts that could significantly affect the maintenance of wild plant diversity, wider ecosystem stability, crop production, food security and human welfare.

Section snippets

Importance of pollinator declines

Pollinators play an important functional role in most terrestrial ecosystems and represent a key ecosystem service that is vital to the maintenance of both wild plant communities 1, 2 and agricultural productivity 3, 4. Insects, particularly bees, are the primary pollinators of most agricultural crops and wild plants and so our review will focus on insects. Pollination services depend on both domesticated and wild pollinator populations, both of which might be affected by a range of recent and

Current status and trends of pollinators

Globally, the pollinator that is predominantly managed to enhance agricultural production is the honey bee (Apis mellifera), although other species of bee are used in specialist contexts (e.g. the leafcutter bee Megachile rotundata) [6]. The honey bee, which has been well studied compared to other bee species, has been documented to be capable of increasing yield in 96% of animal-pollinated crops (Appendix 1 and 2 in [3]). The honey bee also provides pollination services to many wild plants,

Ecological and economic consequences of pollinator declines

Pollinator loss will impact two broad groups of pollinator-dependent flowering plants: wild flowers and cultivated crops.

Potential drivers of pollinator declines

There are many potential drivers that affect biodiversity in general and pollinator abundance and diversity in particular [6], and different environmental drivers rarely act in isolation [e.g. [39]39]. Interactive, non-additive effects, where one sub-lethal driver increases the severity of another driver, can help explain ongoing declines in wild and managed pollinators (Box 3; 17, 31, 40). However, while awareness of the importance of interacting drivers is increasing [32], most studies have

Conclusion and future directions

Growing evidence points to substantial losses of pollinators in many regions of the globe, with the strongest evidence coming from Europe and North America. Further studies on other continents are needed to map the ubiquity of the phenomenon. The integration of existing national and local monitoring schemes and the establishment of a global programme could yield important data to help direct policy decisions regarding pollinators. Threats to pollinators are diverse, and might interact; the

Acknowledgements

We thank Jochen Pflugfelder, Claire Brittain and Tom Breeze for stimulating discussions. This review was prepared with support for S.G.P., J.C.B., W.E.K. and O.S. from the STEP Project (Status and Trends of European Pollinators, www.step-project.net, EU 7th Framework Program) and the ALARM Project (Assessing Large-scale environmental Risks for biodiversity with tested Methods, www.alarmproject.net, EU 6th Framework Program); the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (funded by

References (99)

  • E. Genersch

    Detection of deformed wing virus, a honey bee viral pathogen, in bumble bees (Bombus terrestris and Bombus pascuorum) with wing deformities

    J. Invertebr. Pathol.

    (2006)
  • Y.P. Chen et al.

    Honeybee viruses

    Adv. Virus Res.

    (2007)
  • T.L. Ashman

    Pollen limitation of plant reproduction: ecological and evolutionary causes and consequences

    Ecology

    (2004)
  • R. Aguilar

    Plant reproductive susceptibility to habitat fragmentation: review and synthesis through a meta-analysis

    Ecol. Lett.

    (2006)
  • A.M. Klein

    Importance of pollinators in changing landscapes for world crops

    Proc. R. Soc. London B. Biol. Sci.

    (2007)
  • T.H. Ricketts

    Landscape effects on crop pollination services: are there general patterns?

    Ecol. Lett.

    (2008)
  • Natural Research Council (2006) Status of Pollinators in North America, National Academic...
  • vanEngelsdorp, D. et al. (2008) A survey of honey bee colony losses in the U.S., Fall 2007 to Spring 2008. PLoS ONE 3,...
  • S.G. Potts

    Declines of managed honeybees and beekeepers in Europe?

    J. Apic. Res.

    (2010)
  • D. Sammataro

    Parasitic mites of honey bees: life history, implications, and impact

    Annu. Rev. Entomol.

    (2000)
  • B. Kraus et al.

    Effect of Varroa jacobsoni (Mesostigmata: Varroidae) on feral Apis mellifera (Hymenoptera: Apidae) in California

    Environ. Entomol.

    (1995)
  • R.F.A. Moritz

    The size of wild honeybee populations (Apis mellifera) and its implications for the conservation of honeybees

    J. Insect Conserv.

    (2007)
  • R. Jaffée

    Estimating the density of honeybee colonies across their natural range to fill the gap in pollinator decline censuses

    Conserv. Biol.

    (2010)
  • M.A. Aizen et al.

    The global stock of domesticated honey bees is growing slower than agricultural demand for pollination

    Curr. Biol.

    (2009)
  • P. Rasmont et al.

    Première estimation de la derive faunique chez les bourdons de la Belgique (Hymenoptera, Apidae)

    Ann. Soc. R. Zool. Belg

    (1988)
  • D. Goulson

    Decline and conservation of bumble bees

    Annu. Rev. Entomol.

    (2008)
  • P.H. Williams et al.

    Bumblebee vulnerability and conservation world-wide

    Apidologie

    (2009)
  • Settele, J. et al. (2008). Climatic risk atlas of European butterflies. BioRisk 1, 1–710,...
  • J.C. Biesmeijer

    Parallel declines in pollinators and insect-pollinated plants in Britain and the Netherlands

    Science

    (2006)
  • C. Kremen

    Crop pollination from native bees at risk from agricultural intensification

    Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A.

    (2002)
  • T.H. Larsen

    Extinction order and altered community structure rapidly disrupt ecosystem functioning

    Ecol. Lett.

    (2005)
  • R. Winfree

    A meta-analysis of bees’ responses to anthropogenic disturbance

    Ecology

    (2009)
  • D. Kleijn et al.

    A retrospective analysis of pollen host plant use by stable and declining bumblebee species

    Ecology

    (2008)
  • M. Burd

    Bateman principle and reproduction-the role of pollen limitation in fruit and seed set

    Bot. Rev.

    (1994)
  • Fontaine, C. et al. (2006) Functional diversity of plant-pollinator interaction webs enhances the persistence of plant...
  • S.J. Hegland et al.

    Is the magnitude of pollen limitation in a plant community affected by pollinator visitation and plant species specialisation levels?

    Oikos

    (2008)
  • W.J. Bond

    Do mutualisms matter? Assessing the impact of pollinator and disperser disruption on plant extinction

    Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci.

    (1994)
  • J. Bascompte

    Asymmetric coevolutionary networks facilitate biodiversity maintenance

    Science

    (2006)
  • J. Bascompte

    The nested assembly of plant animal mutualistic networks

    Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A.

    (2003)
  • J. Memmott

    Tolerance of pollination networks to species extinctions

    Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci.

    (2004)
  • M.A. Fortuna et al.

    Habitat loss and the structure of plant–animal mutualistic networks

    Ecol. Lett.

    (2006)
  • Y. Le Conte et al.

    Climate change: impact on honey bee populations and diseases

    Rev. Sci. Tech. Off. Int. Epizoot.

    (2008)
  • J.M. Tylianakis

    Global change and species interactions in terrestrial ecosystems

    Ecol. Lett.

    (2008)
  • M.A. Aizen

    Long-term global trends in crop yield and production reveal no current pollination shortage but increasing pollinator dependency

    Curr. Biol.

    (2008)
  • L.A. Garibaldi

    Pollinator shortage and global crop yield - Looking at the whole spectrum of pollinator dependency

    Commun. Integr. Biol.

    (2009)
  • J.E. Losey et al.

    The economic value of ecological services provided by Insects

    BioScience

    (2006)
  • P. Hoehn

    Functional group diversity of bee pollinators increases crop yield

    Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci.

    (2008)
  • R. Winfree et al.

    Are ecosystem services stabilized by differences among species? A test using crop pollination

    Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci.

    (2009)
  • B.P. Oldroyd

    What's killing American honey bees?

    Plos Biol.

    (2007)

    • Cited by (0)

    View full text
    Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.