Browsing by Subject "indicator`s plants."

During the last 50 years, agriculture in Finland has become more intensive, open semi-natural farmland habitats have disappeared and the number of animals and plants has been declining. Nectar plants are beneficial resources in agroecosystems. They support crop pollinators, and natural enemies of pests and other species dependent on nectar. Nectar plants can also be indicators of biodiversity. Nectar source plants in field margins provide nectar (and pollen) over the growing season. Various plants benefit from different margins, and their frequency and distribution can be connected with the landscape structure and latitude. This study examined the distribution of nectar plants in field margins of farmland in Southern Finland and determined what plant species provide nectar and at what time of the season. The objectives of the research were to describe the species composition of nectar plant communities in Southern Finland, and hence the biodiversity of plants, and to study the distribution of nectar source plants in the most common margin types. The data were obtained from the Luonto-Mytvas Project research programme “Significance of the Finnish agri-environment support scheme for biodiversity and landscape (Nature MYTVAS)” in 2000-2006. In order to find out what plants have good nectar (pollen) availability literature sources and bee calendars were used. The results shows that the majority of 50 most frequent plants species included in the analysis have value as nectar and pollen sources available for pollinators. There were four different functional groups (f) of plants in the research, depending on their nectar availabilities. The frequent plants in the field margins are available as nectar/pollen sources to pollinators, from April until September-October. There are only few species dependent on margin type in their occurrence. Frequencies of most of the species from all the four groups varied, however, between field-to-field and field-to-road margins.