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Crop Production

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Impacts of invertebrate biodiversity on crop production

through pollination and pest regulation

 

This work package is led by Juliet Osborne at the University of

Exeter and explores the spatial scales at which invertebrate

functional diversity affects crop pollination and pest regulation,

and the subsequent impacts on crop yields. 

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The following hypotheses will be tested:

 

H1. Grassland plant diversity is a key driver of the diversity and abundance of invertebrate pollinators and natural enemies of field bean and oilseed rape crops in the Wessex Chalk.


H2.The abundance and diversity of these invertebrates spilling over from grassland into crops is related to the proportion and quality of grassland in the landscape, and its distance from the crop. The varying mobilities of key invertebrates cause different within-crop spatial patterns.


H3. Effects of invertebrate functional diversity on pollination and pest regulation in crops can be predicted at the field and landscape scales using community-level aggregation of traits.

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The research will involve a large-scale survey of invertebrate biodiversity across a range of agricultural land use intensities. Data will be collated into functional groups to predict spatial patterns in pollination and pest regulation across the landscape. The work package will also a landscape-scale study involving detailed assessment of pollinators and pests in fields of oil seed rape and field beans surrounded by varying amounts and quality of grassland. Finally, manipulation experiments will be carried out to understand the functional role of different flower-visiting insect groups.

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Latest Updates

St Mark’s flies

Bibionid fly (some bibionids are also known as St Mark’s flies) found with oilseed rape pollen. There are definitely interesting differences between species!

photo © Ros Shaw

Welcome Ben Phillips

The WP4 team have been joined by Ben Phillips, who is doing an MRes as part of Juliet Osborne’s research group, and has been working hard in the lab investigating pollinator community effectiveness. Ben has been looking at oilseed rape stigmas to count the pollen grains delivered by a single visit of an oilseed rape pollinator, which were collected in 2014 and 2015.

Ashy Mining Bee

Quite a few insects are found with oilseed rape pollen on as you can see from the picture of a solitary bee, Andrena cineraria, covered in oilseed rape pollen.

So far solitary bees seem to be out performing honey bees in terms of pollen delivery but we have a very small sample size which Ben is planning on increasing this year.

photo © Ros Shaw

Oilseed rape pollen grain

Oilseed rape pollen grains under x40 magnification, coloured pink by fucshin dye. photo © Ben Phillips

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