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Floral resource maps: a tool to explain flower-visiting insect abundance at multiple spatial scales

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Abstract

Context

Flower-visiting insects depend on floral resource availability from both cultivated and semi-natural habitats in agricultural landscapes. Landscape studies exploring insect abundance mainly focus on land cover maps without considering plant species within. Highlighting the functional role of landscapes through the potential floral resources they provide is an overlooked innovative approach.

Objectives

We aimed to identify traits of floral communities that are important, across several spatial scales, for explaining the abundance of flower-visiting insects. Mapping and quantifying potential floral resources according to their attractivity, accessibility and profitability in both crop and non-crop habitats was performed to gain insights into flower-vising insect requirements.

Methods

We translated land-cover maps of 39 landscapes of 250 m, 500 m and 1000 m radius into potential floral resource maps, using pre-existing vegetation surveys and floral traits databases. In the centres of the landscapes, the abundance of flower-visiting insect groups (domestic and wild bees, bumblebees and hoverflies) were recorded in organic winter cereal fields. We then fitted Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) to investigate the effects of flower trait variables (pre-selected with conditional random forests) at both field and landscape scales on the abundance of each flower-visiting insect group.

Results

Floral resource maps explained the abundances of flower-visiting insect groups. Small wild bees (< 1 cm) responded positively to the relative amount of attractive and accessible floral resources at 250 m. The abundance of domestic bees and bumblebees was positively correlated with the relative amount of high nectar producing plants at 1000 m. The abundance of hoverflies was positively influenced by the relative amount of actinomorphic flowers (i.e., those with radial symmetry), at 1000 m.

Conclusion

Resource maps could explain flower-visiting insect abundances, identify which category of floral resources organisms require, and determine in which habitat types these resources prevail. These results open a new research area related to managing the environment by optimising floral resources for flower-visiting insect conservation and pollination maintenance.

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Data availability

The datasets analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We warmly thank the farmers who gave permission to perform flower-visiting insects’ surveys on their farms. We also thank Gérard Savary, Arnaud Maillard and Jean-Luc Roger for their help in collecting land cover information. The study was supported by the TRY initiative on plant traits (http://www.try-db.org). The TRY initiative and database are hosted, developed and maintained by J. Kattge and G. Bönisch (Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany). TRY is currently supported by DIVERSITAS/Future Earth and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-­‐Jena-­‐Leipzig. We also thank Rebecca Spake and the reviewers for their constructive comments on the manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by the Zone Atelier Armorique. Audrey Alignier has received research support for the FLORAG project (2020) and Nathan Lenestour’s internship, and Stéphanie Aviron has received research support for the DIVAG project (2019).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INRAE UMR 0980 BAGAP, 65 rue de St Brieuc, 35042, Rennes Cedex, France

    Audrey Alignier, Nathan Lenestour, Stéphanie Aviron & Léa Uroy

  2. LTSER Zone Atelier Armorique, 35042, Rennes, France

    Audrey Alignier

  3. Université de Rennes (UNIR), UMR-CNRS 6553 ECOBIO, 35042, Rennes, France

    Emma Jeavons, Joan van Baaren, Léa Uroy, Claire Ricono & Cécile Le Lann

  4. Laboratoire de Biologie Végétale Yves Rocher, La Croix des Archers, 56200, La Gacilly, France

    Emma Jeavons

  5. Université de Toulouse, École d’Ingénieurs de Purpan, INPT, UMR Dynafor 1201, 75 voie du TOEC, 31076, Toulouse Cedex, France

    Léa Uroy

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  1. Audrey Alignier
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  2. Nathan Lenestour
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Contributions

AA, SA, CLL and JvB contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were performed by NL, EJ, LU and CR. Data analysis was performed by NL and AA. The first draft of the manuscript was written by AA and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Audrey Alignier.

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Alignier, A., Lenestour, N., Jeavons, E. et al. Floral resource maps: a tool to explain flower-visiting insect abundance at multiple spatial scales. Landsc Ecol 38, 1511–1525 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-023-01643-9

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