EDITOR'S CHOICE: Enhancing gardens as habitats for flower‐visiting aerial insects (pollinators): should we plant native or exotic species?

By A. Salisbury, J. Armitage, H. Bostock, J. Perry, M. Tatchell, K. Thompson. 2015

261 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary Domestic gardens typically consist of a mixture of native and non-native plants which support biodiversity and provide valuable ecosystem services, particularly in urban environments. Many gardeners wish to encourage biodiversity by choosing appropriate plant taxa. The value of native and non-native plants in supporting animal biodiversity is, however, largely unknown. The relative value of native and non-native garden plants to invertebrates was investigated in a replicated field experiment. Plots (deliberately akin to garden borders) were planted with one of three treatments, representing assemblages of plants based on origin (native, near-native and exotic). Invertebrates and resource measurements were recorded over four years. This paper reports the abundance of flower-visiting aerial insects (‘pollinators’) associated with the three plant assemblages. For all pollinator groups on all treatments, greater floral resource resulted in an increase in visits. There was, however, a greater abundance of total pollinators recorded on native and near-native treatments compared with the exotic plots. Short-tongued bumblebees followed the same pattern whilst more hoverflies were recorded on the native treatment than the other treatments, and more honeybees on the near-native treatment. There was no difference between treatments in abundance of long-tongued bumblebees or solitary bees. The lack of difference in solitary bee abundance between treatments was probably due to a third of individuals from this group being recorded on one exotic plant species. The number of flower visitors corresponded to the peak flowering period of the treatments, that is there were fewer flower visitors to the exotic treatment compared with the other treatments in early summer but relatively more later in the season. Synthesis and applications. This experiment has demonstrated that utilizing plants from only a single region of origin (i.e. nativeness) may not be an optimal strategy for resource provision for pollinating insects in gardens. Gardens can be enhanced as a habitat by planting a variety of flowering plants, biased towards native and near-native species but with a selection of exotics to extend the flowering season and potentially provide resources for specialist groups.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Plant Science, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/943fd3439f08225fee24033a2ad80a0dab2a13ec

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Citations in the corpus

Insights from measuring pollen deposition: quantifying the pre-eminence of bees as flower visitors and effective pollinators (2017, background): “…the pre-eminence of bees as flower… main visitors); for the Kent garden, the high value is perhaps more likely to be related to the selection of especially attractive and/or multi-anther-bearing floral types (often non-native and/or hybrids) by human gardeners (cf. Salisbury et al. 2015).”
Are urban systems beneficial, detrimental, or indifferent for biological invasion? (2017, background): “Studies have also concluded that NIS garden plants might benefit pollinators in urban habitats by supplying more consistent resources throughout the growing season (e.g., Salisbury et al. 2015; Tommasi et al. 2004).”
Food in a row: urban trees offer valuable floral resources to pollinating insects (2016, background): “2001), whereas others provide resource for native insects as good as or better than native species (Frankie et al. 2005; Acar et al. 2007; Vervoort et al. 2011; Cawoy et al. 2012; Hanley et al. 2014; Salisbury et al. 2015).”
Evaluating the dependence of urban pollinators on ornamental, non-native, and ‘weedy’ floral resources (2018, background): “gests that native or Bnear-native^ species are preferred (Chrobock et al. 2013; Salisbury et al. 2015).”
Landscape impacts on pollinator communities in temperate systems: evidence and knowledge gaps (2017, unknown): “Gardeners can now make evidence-based decisions on best plant species to attract pollinators (e.g. Garbuzov & Ratnieks 2014; Salisbury et al. 2015) and conﬁrmation that creation of wildﬂower areas (Blackmore & Goulson 2014) and reduced mowing regimes (Garbuzov, Fensome & Ratnieks 2015) provide…”