title: Density of insect-pollinated grassland plants decreases with increasing surrounding land-use intensity.
abstract: Pollinator declines have raised concerns about the persistence of plant species that depend on insect pollination, in particular by bees, for their reproduction. The impact of pollinator declines remains unknown for species-rich plant communities found in temperate seminatural grasslands. We investigated effects of land-use intensity in the surrounding landscape on the distribution of plant traits related to insect pollination in 239 European seminatural grasslands. Increasing arable land use in the surrounding landscape consistently reduced the density of plants depending on bee and insect pollination. Similarly, the relative abundance of bee-pollination-dependent plants increased with higher proportions of non-arable agricultural land (e.g. permanent grassland). This was paralleled by an overall increase in bee abundance and diversity. By isolating the impact of the surrounding landscape from effects of local habitat quality, we show for the first time that grassland plants dependent on insect pollination are particularly susceptible to increasing land-use intensity in the landscape.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Environmental and Climate Research, Lund University, Lund, Sweden; Agroecology, Department of Crop Science, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Yann
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Clough
authors.forename: Johan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ekroos
authors.forename: András
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Báldi
authors.forename: Péter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Batáry
authors.forename: Riccardo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bommarco
authors.forename: Nicolas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Gross
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Holzschuh
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hopfenmüller
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Knop
authors.forename: Mikko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kuussaari
authors.forename: Regina
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lindborg
authors.forename: Lorenzo
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Marini
authors.forename: Erik
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Öckinger
authors.forename: Simon G
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Potts
authors.forename: Juha
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pöyry
authors.forename: Stuart Pm
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Roberts
authors.forename: Ingolf
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Steffan-Dewenter
authors.forename: Henrik G
authors.initials: HG
authors.lastname: Smith
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees / Q000502:physiology; D017753:Ecosystem; D007313:Insecta / Q000502:physiology*; D016014:Linear Models; D008954:Models, Biological; D018521:Plant Physiological Phenomena; D054817:Pollination; D011156:Population Density
keywords: Agricultural intensification; bee specificity; canopy height; insect dependence; leaf dry matter content; mutualism disruption; plant-pollinator interactions; specific leaf area