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A meta-analysis of single visit pollination effectiveness

View ORCID ProfileM.L. Page, View ORCID ProfileC.C. Nicholson, View ORCID ProfileR.M. Brennan, A.T. Britzman, J. Greer, View ORCID ProfileJ. Hemberger, View ORCID ProfileH. Kahl, U. Müller, Y. Peng, View ORCID ProfileN.M. Rosenberger, View ORCID ProfileC. Stuligross, L. Wang, View ORCID ProfileL.H. Yang, View ORCID ProfileN.M. Williams
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.12.432378
M.L. Page
1University of California, Davis, Department of Entomology and Nematology
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  • For correspondence: mpage@ucdavis.edu
C.C. Nicholson
1University of California, Davis, Department of Entomology and Nematology
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R.M. Brennan
1University of California, Davis, Department of Entomology and Nematology
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A.T. Britzman
1University of California, Davis, Department of Entomology and Nematology
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J. Greer
2University of California, Davis, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology
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J. Hemberger
2University of California, Davis, Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology
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H. Kahl
1University of California, Davis, Department of Entomology and Nematology
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U. Müller
1University of California, Davis, Department of Entomology and Nematology
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Y. Peng
3Chengdu Institute of Biology, Center for Ecological Studies
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N.M. Rosenberger
1University of California, Davis, Department of Entomology and Nematology
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C. Stuligross
1University of California, Davis, Department of Entomology and Nematology
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L. Wang
1University of California, Davis, Department of Entomology and Nematology
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L.H. Yang
1University of California, Davis, Department of Entomology and Nematology
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N.M. Williams
1University of California, Davis, Department of Entomology and Nematology
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Abstract

Many animals provide essential ecosystem services in the form of plant pollination. A rich literature documents considerable variation in the single visit pollination effectiveness of different plant visitors, but this literature has yet to be comprehensively synthesized. We conducted a hierarchical meta-analysis of 193 studies and extracted 1716 single visit effectiveness (SVE) comparisons for 252 plant species. We paired SVE data with visitation frequency data for 75 of these studies. Given the global dominance of honeybees in pollinator communities, we used these data to ask: 1) Do honeybees (Apis mellifera) and other floral visitors vary in their SVE?; 2) To what extent do plant and pollinator attributes predict the difference in SVE between honeybees and other visitors?; and 3) Is there a correlation between floral visitation frequency and SVE? We found that honeybees were significantly less effective than the most effective non-honeybee pollinator. Although not significantly different, honeybees also tended to be less effective than the mean community effectiveness. Honeybees were less effective as pollinators of crop plants and when compared to birds and other bees. Visitation frequency and pollination effectiveness were positively correlated, but this trend was largely driven by data from communities where honeybees were absent, suggesting that honeybees generally combine high visitation frequency and lower SVE. Our study demonstrates that non-honeybee floral visitors are highly effective pollinators of many crop and non-crop plants. While the high visitation frequency typically displayed by honeybees undoubtably makes them important pollinators, we show that honeybees are slightly less effective than the average pollinator and rarely the most effective pollinator of the plants they visit. As such, honeybees may be imperfect substitutes for the loss of wild pollinators and safeguarding global crop production will benefit from conservation of non-honeybee taxa.

Open Research Statement: Although we are fully committed to data transparency, we are also aware of different research teams working on related meta-analyses. As such, we prefer to wait until our paper is accepted to make data publicly available but are happy to share data upon request. Data will be permanently archived on Figshare following acceptance.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.
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Posted March 15, 2021.
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A meta-analysis of single visit pollination effectiveness
M.L. Page, C.C. Nicholson, R.M. Brennan, A.T. Britzman, J. Greer, J. Hemberger, H. Kahl, U. Müller, Y. Peng, N.M. Rosenberger, C. Stuligross, L. Wang, L.H. Yang, N.M. Williams
bioRxiv 2021.03.12.432378; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.12.432378
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A meta-analysis of single visit pollination effectiveness
M.L. Page, C.C. Nicholson, R.M. Brennan, A.T. Britzman, J. Greer, J. Hemberger, H. Kahl, U. Müller, Y. Peng, N.M. Rosenberger, C. Stuligross, L. Wang, L.H. Yang, N.M. Williams
bioRxiv 2021.03.12.432378; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.12.432378

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