Browsing by Subject "Wild pollinator"

More than 75% of global food production benefits from insect pollinators. As the number of pollinators is declining, food security may be at risk. Bees are commonly considered as the most efficient pollinators, and this is reflected in the number of studies on crop pollination by bees. However, other taxa also visit crop flowers and may have a significant role in pollination. Ants are known to visit flowers for many different reasons, but their contribution to pollination is not clear. Raspberry is an economically important crop which highly benefits from animal pollination. The aim of this study was to examine the potential contribution of ants to raspberry pollination, in Coffs Harbour, Australia. The contribution of ants to pollination was evaluated in a bagging experiment comparing fruits from open pollination, ant-only visitation pollination, and exclusion of all pollinators, by recording ants’ abundance and diversity on raspberry flowers by transect walks and examining pollen carried on their bodies by inspecting swab samples under the microscope. The open pollination treatment had significantly higher numbers of drupelets and fruit weight than the pollinator exclusion treatment. The ant pollination treatment resulted in higher numbers of drupelets and fruit weight compared to the pollinator exclusion treatment. The abundance of ants varied considerably in different locations. Ants were the most abundant visitors in half of the studied locations. Ants were more active in the morning, while the proportion of honey bees and stingless bees increased after 11 a.m. compared to ants. Ten different ant species were found to visit raspberry flowers and raspberry pollen was found on ants’ bodies. This study shows the importance of ants in the pollination of raspberry flowers and their influence on raspberry fruit formation. All flower visitors should be studied to establish their relative contribution to crop pollination to ensure growers can plan the pollinator management for each crop and environment separately. This study shows that the role of the ants in crop pollination may have been underestimated.