Pollination ecology in the 21st Century: Key questions for future research

By C. Mayer, L. S. Adler, W. S. Armbruster, A. Dafni, Connal Eardley, Shuang‐Quan Huang, P. Kevan, J. Ollerton, L. Packer, A. Ssymank and 2 more. 2011

143 citations recorded by the source corpus.

To inspire new ideas in research on pollination ecology, we list the most important unanswered questions in the field. This list was drawn up by contacting 170 scientists from different areas of pollination ecology and asking them to contribute their opinion on the greatest knowledge gaps that need to be addressed. Almost 40% of them took part in our email poll and we received more than 650 questions and comments, which we classified into different categories representing various aspects of pollination research. The original questions were merged and synthesised, and a final vote and ranking led to the resultant list. The categories cover plant sexual reproduction, pollen and stigma biology, abiotic pollination, evolution of animal-mediated pollination, interactions of pollinators and floral antagonists, pollinator behaviour, taxonomy, plant-pollinator assemblages, geographical trends in diversity, drivers of pollinator loss, ecosystem services, management of pollination, and conservation issues such as the implementation of pollinator conservation. We focused on questions that were of a broad scope rather than case-specific; thus, addressing some questions may not be feasible within single research projects but constitute a general guide for future directions. With this compilation we hope to raise awareness of pollination-related topics not only among researchers but also among non-specialists including policy makers, funding agencies and the public at large.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/aff872bd5b6c2fe256f7f9aee4a958d3a43ea72f

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

1. D. Stanley
2. A. Jacquemart
3. J C Stout
4. D. Michez
5. M. Vanderplanck
6. Dave Goulson

In Nature and Landscape Conservation

1. A. Jacquemart
2. J C Stout
3. D. Michez
4. M. Vanderplanck

In Plant Science

1. D. Stanley
2. A. Jacquemart
3. J C Stout
4. Dave Goulson

Citations in the corpus

• Pollen nutrients better explain bumblebee colony development than pollen diversity (2017, background): “Bumblebee food resources management The optimisation of mitigation strategies to conserve plant and pollinator diversities is one of the key challenges for ecologists in the 21st century (Mayer et al., 2011).”
• Quantifying the impacts of bioenergy crops on pollinating insect abundance and diversity: a field‐scale evaluation reveals taxon‐specific responses (2013, background): “Although many human activities can directly or indirectly drive pollinator decline, many authors cite the primary drivers as agricultural intensification and land-use change (Kearns, Inouye & Waser 1998; Kremen, Williams & Thorp 2002; Mayer et al. 2011).”