Selection of floral resources to optimise conservation of agriculturally-functional insect groups

Carrié, Romain, George, David and Wäckers, Felix (2012) Selection of floral resources to optimise conservation of agriculturally-functional insect groups. Journal of Insect Conservation, 16 (4). pp. 635-640. ISSN 1366-638X

Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)

Abstract

Non-crop vegetation in agricultural landscapes can provide a means of conserving insects in farmed landscapes and optimising on-farm ecosystem services as a result. Inclusion of floral resources may be particularly useful in conserving many beneficial insects, where groups including pollinators and pest natural enemies often rely on nectar and pollen during (at least part of) their life-cycle. As not all flowers are equally suited to all beneficial insects, selection of appropriate flowering plants is key to ensuring that conservation targets are met and benefits to ecosystems services realised as a result. This short paper describes an experiment conducted to assess the ‘total temporal attractiveness’ of a range of British wildflowers to selected functional insect groups. The results obtained demonstrate that flowering period alone is a poor indicator of plant suitability to insects, where no relationship existed between this and attraction to insects overall. Data also suggest that, based on attraction over a season, certain flowering plants are more likely to be of general insect conservation value and/or benefit to functional insect groups than others. Attraction to pest insects was also considered, with relatively high catches of thrips and pollen beetles observed in flowering stands of some plants.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Floral attraction, functional biodiversity, ecosystem services
Subjects:	C100 Biology C200 Botany D300 Animal Science D700 Agricultural Sciences
Department:	Faculties > Health and Life Sciences > Applied Sciences
Depositing User:	Ay Okpokam
Date Deposited:	04 Oct 2012 10:55
Last Modified:	12 Oct 2019 18:27
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/9421

Downloads