Quantifying the attractiveness of garden flowers for pollinators
There is great interest in planting urban areas to benefit pollinating insects, with the potential that urban areas and gardens could act as an extensive network of pollinator-friendly habitats. However, there are a great many different plant cultivars available to the gardener, and a paucity of evi...
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Veröffentlicht in: | Journal of insect conservation 2019-12, Vol.23 (5-6), p.803-817 |
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Zusammenfassung: | There is great interest in planting urban areas to benefit pollinating insects, with the potential that urban areas and gardens could act as an extensive network of pollinator-friendly habitats. However, there are a great many different plant cultivars available to the gardener, and a paucity of evidence-based advice as to which plants are truly most attractive to flower-visiting insects. Here, we report insect visitation to metre square plots of 111 different ornamental plant cultivars at a site in central UK. Data were collected over 5 years, and comprise over 9000 insect observations, which were identified to species (for honeybees and bumblebees) or as ‘solitary bees’, Syrphidae, Lepidoptera and ‘others’. Unlike some previous studies, we found no difference in numbers of insects attracted to native or non-native species, or according to whether plants were annuals, biennials or perennials, but we did find that native plants attracted a significantly higher diversity of flower-visiting insects. Overall, the most-visited plants were
Calamintha nepeta
,
Helenium autumnale
and
Geranium rozanne.
However, patterns of visitation were quite different for every insect taxa examined. For example, different species of short-tongued bumblebees showed little overlap in their most-preferred plant cultivars. Interestingly, very similar plant cultivars often attracted different insect communities; for example, 72% of visitors to
Aster novi belgii
were honeybees or bumblebees, while the related
Anthemis tinctoria
, which also has daisy-like flowers, did not attract a single honeybee or bumblebee but was popular with solitary bees, hoverflies, and ‘other’ pollinators. Some plant cultivars such as
Eryngium planum
and
Myosotis arvensis
were attractive to a broad range of insects, while others attracted only a few species but sometimes in large numbers, such as
Veronicastrum virginicum
and
Helenium autumnale
which were both visited predominantly by honey bees. It is clear that we do not yet fully understand what factors drive insect flower preferences. Recommendations are made as to which flower cultivars could be combined to provide forage for a diversity of pollinator groups over the season from early spring to autumn, though it must be born in mind that some plants are likely to perform differently when grown in different environmental conditions. |
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ISSN: | 1366-638X 1572-9753 |
DOI: | 10.1007/s10841-019-00177-3 |