ORCID Profile
0000-0002-2045-980X
Current Organisation
University of Reading
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Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 02-10-2018
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 04-01-2021
Publisher: The Royal Society
Date: 17-03-2021
Abstract: While an increasing number of studies indicate that the range, ersity and abundance of many wild pollinators has declined, the global area of pollinator-dependent crops has significantly increased over the last few decades. Crop pollination studies to date have mainly focused on either identifying different guilds pollinating various crops, or on factors driving spatial changes and turnover observed in these communities. The mechanisms driving temporal stability for ecosystem functioning and services, however, remain poorly understood. Our study quantifies temporal variability observed in crop pollinators in 21 different crops across multiple years at a global scale. Using data from 43 studies from six continents, we show that (i) higher pollinator ersity confers greater inter-annual stability in pollinator communities, (ii) temporal variation observed in pollinator abundance is primarily driven by the three-most dominant species, and (iii) crops in tropical regions demonstrate higher inter-annual variability in pollinator species richness than crops in temperate regions. We highlight the importance of recognizing wild pollinator ersity in agricultural landscapes to stabilize pollinator persistence across years to protect both bio ersity and crop pollination services. Short-term agricultural management practices aimed at dominant species for stabilizing pollination services need to be considered alongside longer term conservation goals focussed on maintaining and facilitating bio ersity to confer ecological stability.
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 28-02-2013
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 14-01-2017
DOI: 10.1111/COBI.12840
Abstract: Research on urban insect pollinators is changing views on the biological value and ecological importance of cities. The abundance and ersity of native bee species in urban landscapes that are absent in nearby rural lands evidence the biological value and ecological importance of cities and have implications for bio ersity conservation. Lagging behind this revised image of the city are urban conservation programs that historically have invested in education and outreach rather than programs designed to achieve high-priority species conservation results. We synthesized research on urban bee species ersity and abundance to determine how urban conservation could be repositioned to better align with new views on the ecological importance of urban landscapes. Due to insect pollinators' relatively small functional requirements-habitat range, life cycle, and nesting behavior-relative to larger mammals, we argue that pollinators put high-priority and high-impact urban conservation within reach. In a rapidly urbanizing world, transforming how environmental managers view the city can improve citizen engagement and contribute to the development of more sustainable urbanization.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 22-09-2015
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 02-08-2011
DOI: 10.1111/J.1461-0248.2011.01669.X
Abstract: Sustainable agricultural landscapes by definition provide high magnitude and stability of ecosystem services, bio ersity and crop productivity. However, few studies have considered landscape effects on the stability of ecosystem services. We tested whether isolation from florally erse natural and semi-natural areas reduces the spatial and temporal stability of flower-visitor richness and pollination services in crop fields. We synthesised data from 29 studies with contrasting biomes, crop species and pollinator communities. Stability of flower-visitor richness, visitation rate (all insects except honey bees) and fruit set all decreased with distance from natural areas. At 1 km from adjacent natural areas, spatial stability decreased by 25, 16 and 9% for richness, visitation and fruit set, respectively, while temporal stability decreased by 39% for richness and 13% for visitation. Mean richness, visitation and fruit set also decreased with isolation, by 34, 27 and 16% at 1 km respectively. In contrast, honey bee visitation did not change with isolation and represented > 25% of crop visits in 21 studies. Therefore, wild pollinators are relevant for crop productivity and stability even when honey bees are abundant. Policies to preserve and restore natural areas in agricultural landscapes should enhance levels and reliability of pollination services.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 11-03-2019
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 04-10-2019
Abstract: Bio ersity benefits pollination, pest control, and crop productivity but suffers from land-use intensification.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 22-03-2019
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 13-09-2017
DOI: 10.1111/DDI.12638
Publisher: PeerJ
Date: 09-08-2016
DOI: 10.7717/PEERJ.2249
Abstract: Background. Pollinators, which provide the agriculturally and ecologically essential service of pollination, are under threat at a global scale. Habitat loss and homogenisation, pesticides, parasites and pathogens, invasive species, and climate change have been identified as past and current threats to pollinators. Actions to mitigate these threats, e.g., agri-environment schemes and pesticide-use moratoriums, exist, but have largely been applied post-hoc. However, future sustainability of pollinators and the service they provide requires anticipation of potential threats and opportunities before they occur, enabling timely implementation of policy and practice to prevent, rather than mitigate, further pollinator declines. Methods. Using a horizon scanning approach we identified issues that are likely to impact pollinators, either positively or negatively, over the coming three decades. Results. Our analysis highlights six high priority, and nine secondary issues. High priorities are: (1) corporate control of global agriculture, (2) novel systemic pesticides, (3) novel RNA viruses, (4) the development of new managed pollinators, (5) more frequent heatwaves and drought under climate change, and (6) the potential positive impact of reduced chemical use on pollinators in non-agricultural settings. Discussion. While current pollinator management approaches are largely driven by mitigating past impacts, we present opportunities for pre-emptive practice, legislation, and policy to sustainably manage pollinators for future generations.
Publisher: Pensoft Publishers
Date: 08-09-2023
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 25-11-2016
Abstract: What governments can do to safeguard pollination services
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 09-02-2021
DOI: 10.1111/JEN.12869
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 23-10-2023
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 18-02-2016
DOI: 10.1038/NCOMMS10841
Abstract: Nature Communications 6: Article number: 7414 (2015) Published: 16 June 2015 Updated: 18 February 2016. The authors inadvertently omitted Kimiora L. Ward, who managed and contributed data, from the author list. This has now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 16-06-2015
DOI: 10.1038/NCOMMS8414
Abstract: There is compelling evidence that more erse ecosystems deliver greater benefits to people, and these ecosystem services have become a key argument for bio ersity conservation. However, it is unclear how much bio ersity is needed to deliver ecosystem services in a cost-effective way. Here we show that, while the contribution of wild bees to crop production is significant, service delivery is restricted to a limited subset of all known bee species. Across crops, years and biogeographical regions, crop-visiting wild bee communities are dominated by a small number of common species, and threatened species are rarely observed on crops. Dominant crop pollinators persist under agricultural expansion and many are easily enhanced by simple conservation measures, suggesting that cost-effective management strategies to promote crop pollination should target a different set of species than management strategies to promote threatened bees. Conserving the biological ersity of bees therefore requires more than just ecosystem-service-based arguments.
Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Date: 02-05-2014
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 11-03-2013
DOI: 10.1111/ELE.12082
Abstract: Bees provide essential pollination services that are potentially affected both by local farm management and the surrounding landscape. To better understand these different factors, we modelled the relative effects of landscape composition (nesting and floral resources within foraging distances), landscape configuration (patch shape, interpatch connectivity and habitat aggregation) and farm management (organic vs. conventional and local-scale field ersity), and their interactions, on wild bee abundance and richness for 39 crop systems globally. Bee abundance and richness were higher in ersified and organic fields and in landscapes comprising more high-quality habitats bee richness on conventional fields with low ersity benefited most from high-quality surrounding land cover. Landscape configuration effects were weak. Bee responses varied slightly by biome. Our synthesis reveals that pollinator persistence will depend on both the maintenance of high-quality habitats around farms and on local management practices that may offset impacts of intensive monoculture agriculture.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 17-02-2022
DOI: 10.1002/ECY.3614
Abstract: Seventy five percent of the world's food crops benefit from insect pollination. Hence, there has been increased interest in how global change drivers impact this critical ecosystem service. Because standardized data on crop pollination are rarely available, we are limited in our capacity to understand the variation in pollination benefits to crop yield, as well as to anticipate changes in this service, develop predictions, and inform management actions. Here, we present CropPol, a dynamic, open, and global database on crop pollination. It contains measurements recorded from 202 crop studies, covering 3,394 field observations, 2,552 yield measurements (i.e., berry mass, number of fruits, and fruit density [kg/ha], among others), and 47,752 insect records from 48 commercial crops distributed around the globe. CropPol comprises 32 of the 87 leading global crops and commodities that are pollinator dependent. Malus domestica is the most represented crop (32 studies), followed by Brassica napus (22 studies), Vaccinium corymbosum (13 studies), and Citrullus lanatus (12 studies). The most abundant pollinator guilds recorded are honey bees (34.22% counts), bumblebees (19.19%), flies other than Syrphidae and Bombyliidae (13.18%), other wild bees (13.13%), beetles (10.97%), Syrphidae (4.87%), and Bombyliidae (0.05%). Locations comprise 34 countries distributed among Europe (76 studies), North America (60), Latin America and the Caribbean (29), Asia (20), Oceania (10), and Africa (7). S ling spans three decades and is concentrated on 2001–2005 (21 studies), 2006–2010 (40), 2011–2015 (88), and 2016–2020 (50). This is the most comprehensive open global data set on measurements of crop flower visitors, crop pollinators and pollination to date, and we encourage researchers to add more datasets to this database in the future. This data set is released for non‐commercial use only. Credits should be given to this paper (i.e., proper citation), and the products generated with this database should be shared under the same license terms (CC BY‐NC‐SA).
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 10-05-2017
DOI: 10.1111/GCB.13714
Abstract: Agricultural intensification is a leading cause of global bio ersity loss, which can reduce the provisioning of ecosystem services in managed ecosystems. Organic farming and plant ersification are farm management schemes that may mitigate potential ecological harm by increasing species richness and boosting related ecosystem services to agroecosystems. What remains unclear is the extent to which farm management schemes affect bio ersity components other than species richness, and whether impacts differ across spatial scales and landscape contexts. Using a global metadataset, we quantified the effects of organic farming and plant ersification on abundance, local ersity (communities within fields), and regional ersity (communities across fields) of arthropod pollinators, predators, herbivores, and detritivores. Both organic farming and higher in-field plant ersity enhanced arthropod abundance, particularly for rare taxa. This resulted in increased richness but decreased evenness. While these responses were stronger at local relative to regional scales, richness and abundance increased at both scales, and richness on farms embedded in complex relative to simple landscapes. Overall, both organic farming and in-field plant ersification exerted the strongest effects on pollinators and predators, suggesting these management schemes can facilitate ecosystem service providers without augmenting herbivore (pest) populations. Our results suggest that organic farming and plant ersification promote erse arthropod metacommunities that may provide temporal and spatial stability of ecosystem service provisioning. Conserving erse plant and arthropod communities in farming systems therefore requires sustainable practices that operate both within fields and across landscapes.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 06-01-2020
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 08-07-2022
DOI: 10.1111/BRV.12876
Abstract: Disturbances alter bio ersity via their specific characteristics, including severity and extent in the landscape, which act at different temporal and spatial scales. Bio ersity response to disturbance also depends on the community characteristics and habitat requirements of species. Untangling the mechanistic interplay of these factors has guided disturbance ecology for decades, generating mixed scientific evidence of bio ersity responses to disturbance. Understanding the impact of natural disturbances on bio ersity is increasingly important due to human‐induced changes in natural disturbance regimes. In many areas, major natural forest disturbances, such as wildfires, windstorms, and insect outbreaks, are becoming more frequent, intense, severe, and widespread due to climate change and land‐use change. Conversely, the suppression of natural disturbances threatens disturbance‐dependent biota. Using a meta‐analytic approach, we analysed a global data set (with most s ling concentrated in temperate and boreal secondary forests) of species assemblages of 26 taxonomic groups, including plants, animals, and fungi collected from forests affected by wildfires, windstorms, and insect outbreaks. The overall effect of natural disturbances on α‐ ersity did not differ significantly from zero, but some taxonomic groups responded positively to disturbance, while others tended to respond negatively. Disturbance was beneficial for taxonomic groups preferring conditions associated with open canopies (e.g. hymenopterans and hoverflies), whereas ground‐dwelling groups and/or groups typically associated with shady conditions (e.g. epigeic lichens and mycorrhizal fungi) were more likely to be negatively impacted by disturbance. Across all taxonomic groups, the highest α‐ ersity in disturbed forest patches occurred under moderate disturbance severity, i.e. with approximately 55% of trees killed by disturbance. We further extended our meta‐analysis by applying a unified ersity concept based on Hill numbers to estimate α‐ ersity changes in different taxonomic groups across a gradient of disturbance severity measured at the stand scale and incorporating other disturbance features. We found that disturbance severity negatively affected ersity for Hill number q = 0 but not for q = 1 and q = 2, indicating that ersity–disturbance relationships are shaped by species relative abundances. Our synthesis of α‐ ersity was extended by a synthesis of disturbance‐induced change in species assemblages, and revealed that disturbance changes the β‐ ersity of multiple taxonomic groups, including some groups that were not affected at the α‐ ersity level (birds and woody plants). Finally, we used mixed rarefaction/extrapolation to estimate bio ersity change as a function of the proportion of forests that were disturbed, i.e. the disturbance extent measured at the landscape scale. The comparison of intact and naturally disturbed forests revealed that both types of forests provide habitat for unique species assemblages, whereas species ersity in the mixture of disturbed and undisturbed forests peaked at intermediate values of disturbance extent in the simulated landscape. Hence, the relationship between α‐ ersity and disturbance severity in disturbed forest stands was strikingly similar to the relationship between species richness and disturbance extent in a landscape consisting of both disturbed and undisturbed forest habitats. This result suggests that both moderate disturbance severity and moderate disturbance extent support the highest levels of bio ersity in contemporary forest landscapes.
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 02-08-2018
Abstract: Decades of research have fostered the now-prevalent assumption that noncrop habitat facilitates better pest suppression by providing shelter and food resources to the predators and parasitoids of crop pests. Based on our analysis of the largest pest-control database of its kind, noncrop habitat surrounding farm fields does affect multiple dimensions of pest control, but the actual responses of pests and enemies are highly variable across geographies and cropping systems. Because noncrop habitat often does not enhance biological control, more information about local farming contexts is needed before habitat conservation can be recommended as a viable pest-suppression strategy. Consequently, when pest control does not benefit from noncrop vegetation, farms will need to be carefully comanaged for competing conservation and production objectives.
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 20-02-2019
DOI: 10.1101/554170
Abstract: Human land use threatens global bio ersity and compromises multiple ecosystem functions critical to food production. Whether crop yield-related ecosystem services can be maintained by few abundant species or rely on high richness remains unclear. Using a global database from 89 crop systems, we partition the relative importance of abundance and species richness for pollination, biological pest control and final yields in the context of on-going land-use change. Pollinator and enemy richness directly supported ecosystem services independent of abundance. 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 bio ersity of ecosystem service providers is therefore vital to sustain the flow of key agroecosystem benefits to society.
Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Date: 30-11-2016
Abstract: Many of the world’s crops are pollinated by insects, and bees are often assumed to be the most important pollinators. To our knowledge, our study is the first quantitative evaluation of the relative contribution of non-bee pollinators to global pollinator-dependent crops. Across 39 studies we show that insects other than bees are efficient pollinators providing 39% of visits to crop flowers. A shift in perspective from a bee-only focus is needed for assessments of crop pollinator bio ersity and the economic value of pollination. These studies should also consider the services provided by other types of insects, such as flies, wasps, beetles, and butterflies—important pollinators that are currently overlooked.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 30-11-2023
DOI: 10.1002/EAP.2743
Abstract: There is increasing evidence that farmers in many areas are achieving below maximum yields due to insufficient pollination. Practical and effective approaches are needed to maintain wild pollinator populations within agroecosystems so they can deliver critical pollination services that underpin crop production. We established nesting and wildflower habitat interventions in 24 UK apple orchards and measured effects on flower‐visiting insects and the pollination they provide, exploring how this was affected by landscape context. We quantified the extent of pollination deficits and assessed whether the management of wild pollinators can reduce deficits and deliver improved outcomes for growers over 3 years. Wildflower interventions increased solitary bee numbers visiting apple flowers by over 20%, but there was no effect of nesting interventions. Other pollinator groups were influenced by both local and landscape‐scale factors, with bumblebees and hoverflies responding to the relative proportion of semi‐natural habitat at larger spatial scales (1000 m), while honeybees and other flies responded at 500 m or less. By improving fruit number and quality, pollinators contributed more than £16 k per hectare. However, deficits (where maximum potential was not being reached due to a lack of pollination) were recorded and the extent of these varied across orchards, and from year to year, with a 22% deficit in output in the worst (equivalent to ~£14 k/ha) compared to less than 3% (equivalent to ~£2 k/ha) in the best year. Although no direct effect of our habitat interventions on deficits in gross output was observed, initial fruit set and seed set deficits were reduced by abundant bumblebees, and orchards with a greater abundance of solitary bees saw lower deficits in fruit size. The abundance of pollinators in apple orchards is influenced by different local and landscape factors that interact and vary between years. Consequently, pollination, and the extent of economic output deficits, also vary between orchards and years. We highlight how approaches, including establishing wildflower areas and optimizing the ratio of cropped and non‐cropped habitats can increase the abundance of key apple pollinators and improve outcomes for growers.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 06-2013
DOI: 10.1890/120126
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
No related grants have been discovered for Simon Potts.