Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, United States of America.
Department of Entomology & Plant Pathology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2024 Sep 4;19(9):e0309000. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0309000. eCollection 2024.
Planting floral resources is a common strategy for increasing the abundance and diversity of beneficial flower-visiting insects in human-modified systems. However, the context of the local area and surrounding landscape may affect the attractiveness of these floral resource provisioning plots. We compared the relative effects of local floral resources and surrounding urban land-use on the abundance of bees on flowering plants in common gardens in eastern Tennessee, USA. We planted four types of common garden plots at each of five different landscapes representing a variety of surrounding land use: 1) Urban Garden, 2) Forage Grassland, 3) Mixed Agriculture, 4) Forest, and 5) Organic Farm. Each common garden plot type had a fixed plant community representing one of three plant families (Asteraceae, Fabaceae, Lamiaceae) or a mix of all three, and all four common gardens were replicated at all the sites. We concurrently sampled bees in the garden plots and in a 50 m radius (local area) around the garden plots. We found that the size of the floral display (i.e. the visual display size of flowers) and diversity of flowers in the local area did not affect bee abundance or species richness in the garden plots. Although there was a significant positive association between developed land use in a 2 km radius and bee abundance in the gardens, the effect was small, and there was no relationship between land use and bee abundance or species richness in the local area. There were significant differences in the composition of the bee community between the local area and garden plots, but the largest determinants of bee community composition and species richness in the gardens were floral display size and variation in the garden plant species in bloom. This finding is promising for anyone wishing to promote pollinator populations by providing more floral resources.
种植花卉资源是增加人类改造系统中有益访花昆虫数量和多样性的常用策略。然而，当地环境和周围景观的背景可能会影响这些花卉资源供应点的吸引力。我们比较了当地花卉资源和周围城市土地利用对美国田纳西州东部常见花园中开花植物上蜜蜂丰度的相对影响。我们在五个不同景观的每个景观中种植了四种常见花园地块，这些景观代表了各种周围土地利用类型：1）城市花园、2）饲草草原、3）混合农业、4）森林和 5）有机农场。每个常见花园地块类型都有一个固定的植物群落，代表三种植物科之一（菊科、豆科、唇形科）或三种植物的混合，所有四个常见花园在所有地点都进行了复制。我们同时在花园地块中以及花园地块周围 50 米半径范围内（局部地区）对蜜蜂进行采样。我们发现，局部地区花朵的视觉展示大小（即花朵的视觉展示大小）和花朵的多样性对花园地块中的蜜蜂丰度或物种丰富度没有影响。尽管在 2 公里半径范围内的发达土地利用与花园中蜜蜂丰度之间存在显著的正相关关系，但这种影响很小，而且在局部地区土地利用与蜜蜂丰度或物种丰富度之间没有关系。局部地区和花园地块之间的蜜蜂群落组成存在显著差异，但花园中蜜蜂群落组成和物种丰富度的最大决定因素是花朵的视觉展示大小和开花的花园植物物种的变化。这一发现对于任何希望通过提供更多花卉资源来促进传粉者种群的人来说都是有希望的。
