title: Ecological intensification to mitigate impacts of conventional intensive land use on pollinators and pollination.
abstract: Worldwide, human appropriation of ecosystems is disrupting plant-pollinator communities and pollination function through habitat conversion and landscape homogenisation. Conversion to agriculture is destroying and degrading semi-natural ecosystems while conventional land-use intensification (e.g. industrial management of large-scale monocultures with high chemical inputs) homogenises landscape structure and quality. Together, these anthropogenic processes reduce the connectivity of populations and erode floral and nesting resources to undermine pollinator abundance and diversity, and ultimately pollination services. Ecological intensification of agriculture represents a strategic alternative to ameliorate these drivers of pollinator decline while supporting sustainable food production, by promoting biodiversity beneficial to agricultural production through management practices such as intercropping, crop rotations, farm-level diversification and reduced agrochemical use. We critically evaluate its potential to address and reverse the land use and management trends currently degrading pollinator communities and potentially causing widespread pollination deficits. We find that many of the practices that constitute ecological intensification can contribute to mitigating the drivers of pollinator decline. Our findings support ecological intensification as a solution to pollinator declines, and we discuss ways to promote it in agricultural policy and practice.
authors.affiliation: MTA Centre for Ecological Research, Institute of Ecology and Botany, Lendület Ecosystem Services Research Group, Alkotmány u. 2-4., 2163, Vácrátót, Hungary.|MTA Centre for Ecological Research, GINOP Sustainable Ecosystems Group, Klebelsberg Kuno u. 3., 8237, Tihany, Hungary.
authors.forename: Anikó
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kovács-Hostyánszki
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Life Sciences South 252, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844-3051, USA.
authors.forename: Anahí
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Espíndola
authors.affiliation: NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Bush Estate, Penicuik, Edinburgh EH26 0QB, UK.
authors.forename: Adam J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Vanbergen
authors.affiliation: UFZ - Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Dept. of Community Ecology, Theodor-Lieser-Str. 4, 06120 Halle, Germany.|iDiv, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Deutscher Platz 5e, 04103 Leipzig, Germany.|Institute of Biological Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, University of the Philippines Los Banos, College, Laguna 4031, Philippines.
authors.forename: Josef
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Settele
authors.affiliation: University of California, 217 Wellman Hall Berkeley, California 94720-3114 CA, USA.
authors.forename: Claire
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kremen
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK.
authors.forename: Lynn V
authors.initials: LV
authors.lastname: Dicks
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture; D000818:Animals; D058448:Biota; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000502:physiology*; D007313:Insecta / Q000502:physiology*; D054817:Pollination
keywords: Crop production; diversification; food security; grazing/mowing intensity; habitat loss; landscape fragmentation; mass-flowering crops; wild pollinator diversity