Weed-insect pollinator networks as bio-indicators of ecological sustainability in agriculture. A review

By Orianne Rollin, Giovanni Benelli, Stefano Benvenuti, A. Decourtye, S. Wratten, Angelo Canale, N. Desneux. Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 2016

125 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The intensification of agricultural practices contributes to the decline of many taxa such as insects and wild plants. Weeds are serious competitors for crop production and are thus controlled. Nonetheless, weeds enhance floral diversity in agricultural landscapes. Weeds provide food for insects in exchange for pollination. The stability of mutualistic interactions in pollination networks depends on conservation of insect pollinator and weed communities. Some agricultural practices can destabilize interactions and thus modify the stability of pollination networks. Therefore, more knowledge on weed-insect networks is needed. Here, we review the interactions involved in insect visits to weed flowers in temperate arable lands. Our main findings are that (1) weed pollination by insects has a key role in maintaining weed communities in arable lands; (2) weed-insect pollinator interactions are modulated by the flowers’ features and their quality which are attracting insects; (3) most weeds are associated with generalist insect pollinators; and (4) even if weed-pollinator networks are largely mutualistic, some antagonist networks can be observed when deception occurs. We propose three weed-insect pollinator networks as potential bio-indicators to evaluate the ecological sustainability of arable land management strategies in temperate areas: (1) Geometridae and Bombyliidae species visiting Caryophyllaceae, (2) Papilionidae foraging on Apiaceae, and (3) Syrphidae visiting Asteraceae.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Insect Science, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/df7654041ac042604c52edbad4a9120ea2ebc8b1

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

In Insect Science

In Plant Science

Citations in the corpus

Evaluating the dependence of urban pollinators on ornamental, non-native, and ‘weedy’ floral resources (2018, background): “…and Ratnieks 2014; Razanajatovo et al. 2015; Williams et al. 2011), and may even be dependent on them in certain heavily developed urban settings (Matteson and Langellotto 2011), some research suggests that native or Bnear-native^ species are preferred (Chrobock et al. 2013; Salisbury et al. 2015).”
The impact of adult diet on parasitoid reproductive performance (2017, background): “Indeed, since crops usually provide nectar for a limited period, commonly the only source of non-host food is wildflowers, including weeds (Altieri et al. 1977; Wratten et al. 2012; Rollin et al. 2016), and honeydew (Tena et al. 2016).”
Impacts of honeybee density on crop yield: A meta‐analysis (2019, background): “…to prevent inbreeding and promote genetic diversity, many species use cross- pollination and develop self- incompatibility mechanisms, such as temporal separation of the male and female phases (pollen production and stigma receptivity) (Barbier, 1986; Delaplane & Mayer, 2000; Rollin et al., 2016).”
Relationships among ecological traits of wild bee communities along gradients of habitat amount and fragmentation (2017, background): “…the Andrena and Eucera genera, foraging principally on plants in the Brassicaceae and Fabaceae respectively, which can be easily found in the crop mosaic, as mass-flowering crops (oilseed rape) or weed species (clover or mustard) (Le Féon et al. 2013, Bretagnolle and Gaba 2015, Rollin et al. 2016).”