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<P class=formatpublished minmax_bound="true">Published online <ABBR
class=published title=2008-10-16T17:54:00Z minmax_bound="true">16 October
2008</ABBR minmax_bound="true"> | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1175 </P>
<P class=type-of-article minmax_bound="true">News</P>
<H1 class="heading entry-title" minmax_bound="true">Agriculture unaffected by
pollinator declines</H1>
<P class=intro minmax_bound="true">Global crop yields have not suffered even
though key insect populations have shrunk.</P>
<P class=byline minmax_bound="true"><SPAN class=vcard minmax_bound="true"><SPAN
class="author fn" minmax_bound="true">Anna Petherick </SPAN></SPAN></P><SPAN
class=cleardiv minmax_bound="true"><!-- --></SPAN>
<DIV class=entry-content minmax_bound="true">
<DIV class="inline-image right" style="WIDTH: 260px" minmax_bound="true"><IMG
alt=bee src="http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081016/images/pollen-3.jpg"
minmax_bound="true"><SPAN class=imagedescription minmax_bound="true">Crops may
not need quite so many bees for pollination after all.<SPAN class=imagecredit
minmax_bound="true">Punchstock</SPAN></SPAN></DIV>
<P minmax_bound="true">Bees and many other insects may be in decline almost
everywhere — but agriculture that depends on pollinators has been surprisingly
unaffected at the global scale.</P>
<P minmax_bound="true">That's the conclusion of a study by Alexandra Klein at
the University of California, Berkeley, and her colleagues. Using a data set of
global crop production — maintained by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of
the United Nations (FAO) — which spanned 1961 to 2006, they compared the yields
of crops that require pollinators with those that don't.</P>
<P minmax_bound="true">They found that crop yields for both crop types have gone
up consistently, seeing average annual growth rates of about 1.5%. There was
also no difference when the researchers split the data into crops from
developing countries and crops from developed countries. </P>
<P minmax_bound="true">And when the researchers compared crops that are
cultivated almost exclusively in tropical regions, they found no difference
between the success of insect-pollinated crops — such as oil palm, cocoa and the
Brazil nut — and those crops that need only the breeze to spread their pollen.
</P>
<H2 class=inlineheading minmax_bound="true">Underplayed, overplayed</H2>
<P minmax_bound="true">The results, published in <SPAN class=i
minmax_bound="true">Current Biology</SPAN><SUP minmax_bound="true"><A
href="http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081016/full/news.2008.1175.html#B1"
minmax_bound="true">1</A></SUP>, are surprising because several previous studies
have found very large impacts at local scales. Taylor Ricketts, head of
conservation group WWF's conservation science programme, and his colleagues,
reported in 2004 that pollinators increased coffee yields by 20% on plants
growing a kilometre or less from forests in Costa Rica<SUP
minmax_bound="true"><A
href="http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081016/full/news.2008.1175.html#B2"
minmax_bound="true">2</A></SUP>. </P>
<P minmax_bound="true">In 2005, a team led by Jacobus Biesmeijer of the
University of Leeds, UK, found evidence of a drop-off in bee diversity in the
United Kingdom and the Netherlands<SUP minmax_bound="true"><A
href="http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081016/full/news.2008.1175.html#B3"
minmax_bound="true">3</A></SUP>. This coincided with a decline in outcrossing
plant species relative to other sorts of plants. </P>
<P minmax_bound="true">And worries about a pollination crisis have found their
way into international politics, most prominently with the establishment of the
International Initiative for the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Pollinators
(IPI) at a United Nations meeting in 2000.</P>
<P minmax_bound="true">But some scientists think that the pollinator crisis is
overplayed. Jaboury Ghazoul, a plant ecologist at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, has
argued that it is driven mainly by reported declines of crop-pollinating
honeybees in North America and bumblebees and butterflies in Europe<SUP
minmax_bound="true"><A
href="http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081016/full/news.2008.1175.html#B4"
minmax_bound="true">4</A></SUP>.</P>
<P minmax_bound="true">Other data show that native pollinator communities
elsewhere exhibit mixed responses to environmental change, and Ghazoul says that
few staple food crops depend on insect pollinators. </P>
<P minmax_bound="true">"When the IPI was established, there was some
disagreement about how much pollinators are declining," says Linda Collette, a
senior officer on crop associated biodiversity at the FAO, which oversees the
IPI programme. </P>
<H2 class=inlineheading minmax_bound="true">Hidden threat</H2>
<P minmax_bound="true">Klein says her findings do not necessarily negate that
idea that the world is in the throes of a pollination crisis. The data might
hide how farmers have adapted to the problem, she suggests.</P>
<P minmax_bound="true">For example, in almond pollination, many growers move
honeybees into their orchards and use pheromones to stimulate foraging activity,
she says. Some even place compatible pollen in the bees' hives so that they
transport it to the desired variety of almond. And many passion-fruit growers in
Brazil now pollinate crops by hand. </P>
<P minmax_bound="true">For the FAO, the increasing reliance on farmworkers
rather than insects may not represent a crisis. "At the end of the day, what's
important to the FAO is crop production," says Collette. "There may be labour
costs involved in pollinating crops but there could also be market benefits — if
the fruits are better from that, for instance."</P>
<P minmax_bound="true">However, Klein points out that a sudden drop in crop
yields could be just around the corner. "There could be a more widespread
threshold effect coming," she says, "especially if the honeybee problems get
worse in places like California."</P>
<P minmax_bound="true">This may be more likely as farmers all over the planet
start to fill ever more hectares with pollinator-dependent crops, which
contributed 8.4% of total agricultural production in the developed world in 1961
but 14.7% in 2006. "We assume that the trend will continue as many biofuels
crops, such as canola, oil palm and jatropha, are pollinator-dependent plants,"
says Klein.</P>
<UL class=xoxo id=article-refrences minmax_bound="true">
<LI minmax_bound="true">
<H2 class=heading minmax_bound="true">References</H2>
<OL minmax_bound="true">
<LI id=B1 minmax_bound="true">Aizen M. A., Garibaldi, L. A., <SPAN
class=reference-author minmax_bound="true">Cunningham, S. A.</SPAN> &
<SPAN class=reference-author minmax_bound="true">Klein, A. M.</SPAN> <SPAN
class=reference-publication minmax_bound="true">Curr. Biol.</SPAN>
doi:10.1016/j.cub.2008.08.066 (2008).
<LI id=B2 minmax_bound="true"><SPAN class=reference-author
minmax_bound="true">Ricketts, T. H.</SPAN> , <SPAN class=reference-author
minmax_bound="true">Daily, G. C.</SPAN> , <SPAN class=reference-author
minmax_bound="true">Ehrlich, P. R.</SPAN> & <SPAN class=reference-author
minmax_bound="true">Michener, C. D.</SPAN> <SPAN class=reference-publication
minmax_bound="true">Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA</SPAN> <SPAN
class=reference-volume minmax_bound="true">101</SPAN>, 12579–12582 (2004).
<LI id=B3 minmax_bound="true"><SPAN class=reference-author
minmax_bound="true">Biesmeijer, J. C.</SPAN> <SPAN class=i
minmax_bound="true">et al</SPAN>. <SPAN class=reference-publication
minmax_bound="true">Science</SPAN> <SPAN class=reference-volume
minmax_bound="true">313</SPAN>, 351–354 (2008).
<LI id=B4 minmax_bound="true"><SPAN class=reference-author
minmax_bound="true">Ghazoul, J.</SPAN> <SPAN class=reference-publication
minmax_bound="true">Trends Ecol. Evol.</SPAN> <SPAN class=reference-volume
minmax_bound="true">20</SPAN>, 367–373 (2005). </LI></OL></LI></UL></DIV></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT lang=0 face="Gill Sans MT" size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR>Laurie Davies Adams<BR>Executive
Director<BR><B>Pollinator Partnership </B><BR>423 Washington Street, 5th
floor<BR>San Francisco, CA
94111<BR>415-362-1137<BR>LDA@pollinator.org</FONT><FONT lang=0 face=Arial
color=#000000 size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><BR><BR></FONT><FONT lang=0
face="Gill Sans MT" color=#0000ff size=4 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="14"><B><A
href="http://www.pollinator.org/">www.pollinator.org</A></B></FONT><FONT lang=0
face="Gill Sans MT" color=#000000 size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"></B><BR><A
href="http://www.nappc.org/">www.nappc.org</A><BR><BR></FONT><FONT lang=0
face="Gill Sans MT" color=#000000 size=3 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="12"><B><I>National Pollinator Week is June 22-28, 2009. <BR>Beecome
involved at <A
href="http://www.pollinator.org/">www.pollinator.org</A></I></FONT></B></DIV></FONT><BR><BR><BR><DIV CLASS="aol_ad_footer" ID="da1a602a9aff81f9fd6368e59f2e2e5c"><FONT style="color: black; font: normal 10pt ARIAL, SAN-SERIF;"><HR style="MARGIN-TOP: 10px">New <b>MapQuest Local</b> shows what's happening at your destination. Dining, Movies, Events, News & more. <a href="http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1211031713x1200669822/aol?redir=http://local.mapquest.com/?ncid=emlcntnew00000002">Try it out! </a></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>