Even small forest patches increase bee visits to flowers in an oil palm plantation landscape
| dc.creator | Power, C.C. | |
| dc.creator | Nielsen, A. | |
| dc.creator | Sheil, D. | |
| dc.date | 2022-01 | |
| dc.date | 2021-12-20T01:46:12Z | |
| dc.date | 2021-12-20T01:46:12Z | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-06-27T14:10:11Z | |
| dc.description | Pollination sustains biodiversity and food security, but pollinators are threatened by habitat degradation, fragmentation, and loss. We assessed how remaining forest influenced bee visits to flowers in an oil palm-dominated landscape in Borneo. We observed bee visits to six plant species: four crops (Capsicum frutescens L. “chili”; Citrullus lanatus (Thunb.) Matsum & Nakai “watermelon”; Solanum lycopersicum L. “tomato”; and Solanum melongena L. “eggplant”); one native plant Melastoma malabathricum L. “melastome”; and the exotic Turnera subulata Smith “turnera”. We made one local grid-based and one landscape-scale transect-based study spanning 208 and 2130 m from forest, respectively. We recorded 1249 bee visits to 4831 flowers in 1046 ten-min observation periods. Visit frequency varied among plant species, ranging from 0 observed visits to S. lycopersicum to a mean of 0.62 visits per flower per 10 min to C. lanatus. Bee visitation frequency declined with distance from forest in both studies, with expected visitation frequency decreasing by 55% and 66% at the maximum distance from forest in each study. We also tested whether the distance to the nearest oil palm patch, with a maximum distance of 144 m, influenced visitation, but found no such associations. Expected visitation frequency was 70%–77% lower for plants close to a 200 ha forest fragment compared with those near large continuous forests (>400 ha). Our results suggest that, although found throughout the oil palm-dominated landscape, bees depend on remaining forests. Larger forests support more bees, though even a 50 ha fragment has a positive contribution. | |
| dc.identifier | https://hdl.handle.net/10568/116858 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/76013 | |
| dc.language | en | |
| dc.publisher | Wiley | |
| dc.rights | Open Access | |
| dc.source | Power, C. C., Nielsen, A., Sheil, D. 2021. Even small forest patches increase bee visits to flowers in an oil palm plantation landscape. Biotropica. https://doi.org/10.1111/btp.13023 | |
| dc.subject | pollination | |
| dc.subject | bees | |
| dc.subject | oil palms | |
| dc.subject | plantations | |
| dc.subject | biodiversity | |
| dc.title | Even small forest patches increase bee visits to flowers in an oil palm plantation landscape | |
| dc.type | Journal Article |
