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Maintained electrical transmission corridors can provide valuable bumblebee habitat for conservation and ecosystem service provision

Bruce Hill, Ignasi Bartomeus
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/027078
Bruce Hill
1Dunedin City Council, 50 The Octagon, Dunedin 9016, New Zealand.
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Ignasi Bartomeus
2Estación Biológica de Doñana (EBD-CSIC), Avda. Américo Vespucio s n, Isla de la Cartuja, E-41092 Sevilla, Spain.
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  • For correspondence: nacho.bartomeus@gmail.com
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Abstract

Decline in pollinator abundance and diversity is not only a conservation issue but also a threat to crop pollination. Maintained infrastructure corridors, including electricity transmission lines, are potentially valuable wild pollinator habitat. However, this potential is hindered by a lack of evidence comparing wild pollinator’s abundance and diversity on transmission corridors with other recognized wild pollinator habitats. We study the influence of transmission corridors on a key pollinator group, bumblebees, in Sweden’s Uppland region by comparing bumblebee abundance and diversity in transmission corridors with that in other habitats. Our results show that a transmission corridor’s presence has no impact on the surrounding area’s bumblebee diversity. However, transmission corridors and other maintained habitats have an abundance and diversity of bumblebees as high as semi-natural grasslands and do sustain species important both from a conservation and an ecosystem service provision perspective. Under their current management regime transmission corridors already provide valuable bumblebee habitat, but given that forage plant density is the main determinant of bumblebee abundance, they could be further enhanced by establishing and maintaining key forage plants. We show that in northern temperate regions habitats like those within maintained transmission corridors can complement agri-environmental schemes (AES) to assist in both bumblebee conservation and securing the ongoing provision of the ecosystem service they provide.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted September 21, 2015.
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Maintained electrical transmission corridors can provide valuable bumblebee habitat for conservation and ecosystem service provision
Bruce Hill, Ignasi Bartomeus
bioRxiv 027078; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/027078
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Maintained electrical transmission corridors can provide valuable bumblebee habitat for conservation and ecosystem service provision
Bruce Hill, Ignasi Bartomeus
bioRxiv 027078; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/027078

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