The other pollinating insects, the great ones forgotten under the fame of honey bees

It is known that 75% of the planet’s food crops depend to some extent on pollinators, but there has been great uncertainty regarding the relative contribution of honey bees and that of the rest of the pollinating wild insects, since Studies carried out until now only analyzed a few crops and a few regions. Now, a new study quantifies much more clearly the contributions of the honey bee and those of these other species

The new study is the work of an international team of scientists, including, among others, Alfonso Allen-Perkins, from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) in Spain, and James Reilly, from Rutgers University in the United States.

The research carried out through an exhaustive analysis of 93 pollination studies on six continents shows that, contrary to what was commonly believed, honey bees are not responsible for the majority of pollination. of crops. In fact, although honey bees are dominant in many cropping systems analyzed, their visits alone are not always sufficient to explain the yields of these systems. This reveals the importance of pollinators other than honey bees for agricultural production.

However, the study also qualifies the importance of wild insects, indicating that they are not much more important than honey bees, unlike what other recent analyzes suggest.

The authors of the new study found that honey bees and other wild pollinating insects contribute approximately equal amounts to crop yields around the world, having similar average rates of flower visits and producing similar increases in yield per visit. .

The data shows that although the variety of pollinators is not as crucial as the number of visits they make, these visits often include many different species. This highlights how important it is to protect various types of wild pollinators, as the loss of wild insect species could have a significant impact on global food production.

A bumblebee approaching a flower. (Photo: Mike Tome / Cooperative Research Units / USGS)

In addition to advancing knowledge of the effects of different pollinators on crop yields and the importance of protecting wild pollinators, Rachael Winfree, a researcher at Rutgers University and co-author of the study, highlights the importance of having had open data to reanalyze questions that had been answered with much smaller or incomplete data: “The findings we publish here give a different answer than previous work based on smaller data sets.”

The research has been possible thanks to CropPol, the open database on crop pollination created by the authors of this study and more than 100 scientists throughout the globe, with the aim of exploring global patterns and trends and working in solutions for sustainable management and valuation of biodiversity.

For his part, Allen-Perkins highlights that “contrary to common perception, biodiversity conservation and agricultural productivity are not only compatible, but can be complementary, especially in crops that depend on pollinators.”

In summary, the authors of the new study conclude, “our findings highlight the equal importance of honey bees and other wild insect pollinators in global crop production, underscoring the need to promote the conservation of pollinator diversity. to ensure food security and the sustainability of agricultural systems in a constantly changing world.”

The study is titled “Wild insects and honey bees are equally important to crop yields in a global analysis.” And it has been published in the academic journal Global Ecology and Biogeography. (Source: UPM)