Pollination in a Changing World

Dear Colleagues,

Plants are globally threatened by a synergy of habitat loss, lack of effective conservation policies, and global warming, as well. Many endemic and useful plants are threatened with extinction and vital information for their conservation and proper management is lacking: do these plants rely on animal pollinators to set fruit? To what extent do they need cross-pollination to set fruit and viable seed? It is important to keep in mind that all the factors mentioned above affecting plant survival will also affect the behavior and persistence of their animal pollinators. Thus, a collective, global effort towards increasing the understanding of the pollination needs and breeding systems of native plants seems imperative. Societies all around the globe would benefit from that knowledge, especially in developing countries that already use or value these plant resources in different ways. This knowledge would pave the way towards the conservation and sustainable use of this valuable biodiversity.

This Special Issue welcomes researchers all around the globe working with native/endemic/threatened plants of biological, economic, and/or ethnobotanical interest for their respective countries/societies.

Dr. Rodrigo Bustos Singer
Dr. Kit S. Prendergast
Guest Editors

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• angiosperms
• biodiversity
• breeding systems
• cross-pollination, endemism
• gymnosperms
• habitat loss
• management
• pollinators
• sustainable use

Title: Buzz amidst Noise: Investigating the Anthropogenic Noise on Bumblebee-Mediated Pollination
Authors: Zsófia Varga-Szilay; Gergely Szövényi; Gábor Pozsgai
Affiliation: 1 Doctoral School of Biology, Institute of Biology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. 2 cE3c - Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes/Azorean Biodiversity Group, CHANGE - Global Change and Sustainability Institute, Departamento de Ciências e Engenharia do Ambiente, Universidade dos Açores, Açores, Portugal.
Abstract: Anthropogenic noise is a little-studied type of pollution that has been proven to negatively affect the physiology, nervous function and development of insects, thereby it has the potential to disrupt even key ecological services such as pollination. Thus, we investigated the effects of anthropogenic noise on the pollination success of the Bombus terrestris on tomatoes in controlled conditions. We expect that bumblebees avoid flowers exposed to noise more than flowers in non-noisy environments, leading to less efficient pollination and lower fruit quality. The experiment was conducted in Hungary, in 2023. The selected flowers were enclosed with nets before maturity, released exclusively during treatment, and re-enclosed for three days. We used three types of treatments: noisy (with played traffic noise); non-noisy; and a treatment ensuring self-fertilization by excluding bumblebees, without noise. Later, we recorded the fruit quality and counted the number of seeds. There was no significant difference in the number of seeds or the fruit quality among treatments. Our results suggest that the observed effects of anthropogenic noise on bumblebee-mediated pollination may be more nuanced than initially anticipated. In addition to external noise (e.g. traffic noise), the presence of various machines (e.g. irrigation systems) and other loud appliances (e.g. radios) within polytunnels may contribute to everyday noise pollution for bumblebees. These sources could potentially lead to hidden economic losses in production that have not yet been investigated. Therefore, it remains important to conduct further research to understand the behavioural effects of both direct and indirect noise pollution on bumblebees.