Landscape-level effects of forest on pollinators and fruit set of guava (<i>Psidium guajava</i> L.) in orchards across Southern Thailand

Pollination by wild pollinators is a key ecosystem service threatened by anthropogenic-induced land-use change. The proximity to natural habitat has previously been shown to positively affect pollinator communities and improve crop yield and quality but empirical evidence is limited from most parts of the World. Here, across six farms in Southern Thailand, we investigated the significance of landscape-level effects of natural habitat (proportion of and distance to evergreen forest) on both visitation rate and richness of pollinators as well as fruit set of guava (Psidium guajava L.), a local economically-important crop in the tropics. Overall, the most abundant pollinator was the Asian honey bee Apis cerana (39% of all visits) and different species of stingless bees (37%). We found that pollinator richness was unrelated to the proportion and distance to evergreen forest, however, the proportion of forest within a 1, 5 and 10 km radius had a significant positive impact on visitation rate of wild pollinators. Still, neither the various forest parameters nor pollinator visitation rate showed a significant impact on fruit set of guava, perhaps because guava self-pollinates. This illustrates that landscape-level degradation of natural habitat may negatively impact pollinator communities without diminishing the crop yield of the farmers

Who is publishing in ecology and evolution? the underrepresentation of women and the Global South

Introduction: Most global biodiversity is in developing economies. Decades of capacity building should have built sufficient in-country capacity to develop biodiversity baselines; yet has effort provided the expertise to build these baselines?Methods: Grants and access to research opportunities are often linked to success in publishing, with the H-index providing the main metric of academic success. Recent compilations of “Top Researchers in Ecology and Evolution” included 5,419 researchers, but where these researchers are and how representative they are has not been well studied. We explored the global distribution of “Top Researchers in Ecology and Evolution” and explored the representation of Women, non-Caucasians, and non-Caucasian women, as well as the representation of “local” top researchers in different regions.Results: Over half Top Researchers in Ecology and Evolution are from just three countries (United States, United Kingdom, and Australia), and 83% come from 12 higher-income countries. Even in lower-income economies the majority of the few “high impact” researchers are originally from higher-income economies. Only China had a high proportion of their high-impact non-Caucasian researchers, with the majority of researchers coming from that region. Women were also underrepresented across the globe, only three countries had more than 20% of top-performing ecologists being female.Discussion: Ultimately, despite decades of capacity building, we are still failing to build in-country capacity for research or to provide sufficient support for female ecologists to publish and lead the field. Here we discuss why these issues persist, and how we might improve representation and access to opportunity and support for all groups, and provide the analysis needed to provide solutions to global challenges in biodiversity conservation, which require diverse representation to develop effective, and nuanced solutions

CropPol: a dynamic, open and global database on crop pollination

Seventy five percent of the world's food crops benefit from insect pollination. Hence, there has been increased interest in how global change drivers impact this critical ecosystem service. Because standardized data on crop pollination are rarely available, we are limited in our capacity to understand the variation in pollination benefits to crop yield, as well as to anticipate changes in this service, develop predictions, and inform management actions. Here, we present CropPol, a dynamic, open and global database on crop pollination. It contains measurements recorded from 202 crop studies, covering 3,394 field observations, 2,552 yield measurements (i.e. berry weight, number of fruits and kg per hectare, among others), and 47,752 insect records from 48 commercial crops distributed around the globe. CropPol comprises 32 of the 87 leading global crops and commodities that are pollinator dependent. Malus domestica is the most represented crop (32 studies), followed by Brassica napus (22 studies), Vaccinium corymbosum (13 studies), and Citrullus lanatus (12 studies). The most abundant pollinator guilds recorded are honey bees (34.22% counts), bumblebees (19.19%), flies other than Syrphidae and Bombyliidae (13.18%), other wild bees (13.13%), beetles (10.97%), Syrphidae (4.87%), and Bombyliidae (0.05%). Locations comprise 34 countries distributed among Europe (76 studies), Northern America (60), Latin America and the Caribbean (29), Asia (20), Oceania (10), and Africa (7). Sampling spans three decades and is concentrated on 2001-05 (21 studies), 2006-10 (40), 2011-15 (88), and 2016-20 (50). This is the most comprehensive open global data set on measurements of crop flower visitors, crop pollinators and pollination to date, and we encourage researchers to add more datasets to this database in the future. This data set is released for non-commercial use only. Credits should be given to this paper (i.e., proper citation), and the products generated with this database should be shared under the same license terms (CC BY-NC-SA). This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

สาเหตุและผลดีของลักษณะการปิดของ stigma ในดอกเพกา (Oroxylum indicum, Vent.

Thesis (M.Sc., Ecology)--Prince of Songkla University, 200

Plant-pollinator networks in mixed fruit orchards in Southern Thailand

Thesis (Ph.D. (Biology)) Prince of Songkla University, 201

Seasonal Activity of Fruit Bats in a Monoculture Rubber and Oil Palm Plantation in the Southern Philippines

The increasing expansion of monoculture plantations poses a major threat to Asian tropical biodiversity. Yet, in many countries such as the Philippines, the ability of species to persist within plantations has never been explored. We studied the seasonal activity and response of fruit bats in two types of monocultural plantations (rubber and oil palm) in the Southern Philippines from 2016–17 for 12 months. Our mist-netting and monitoring data showed that both plantations can support cosmopolitan species of fruit bats (Cynopterus brachyotis, Eonycteris spelaea, Macroglossus minimus, Ptenochirus jagori, and Rousettus amplexicaudatus), yet a significant variation in the abundance and guild distribution between plantations was observed. Rubber hosted a higher bat abundance than oil palm, which may be influenced by better habitat structure of the matrix (e.g., presence of orchard and fruit plantations) and practices occurring in the rubber plantation. We find that, among seasonal climatic variables, temperature showed significant negative effects on fruit bat abundance. Our results suggest that although monoculture plantations host low diversity (i.e., richness and endemism) they still support generalists which are still ecologically important species. Furthermore, wildlife-friendly commercial plantation practices could both enhance economic growth and biodiversity conservation in the Philippines. Our data both provide the potential for long-term monitoring in the Philippines and highlight the need for more comprehensive monitoring of other bat functional groups and their ability to transverse plantations to provide a more in-depth understanding of the roles and impacts of plantations and other land-use changes

The critical importance of old world fruit bats for healthy ecosystems and economies

FIGURE 6 | Pteropodid-plant interactions that are potentially double mutualisms, in which a pteropodid species might act as both pollinator and seed disperser for the same plant species. Double mutualisms were assessed at the species level for both plants and bats. The graph shows the number of species-species interactions within each plant family and pteropodid genus. Only families with more than one interaction are shown. Plants in an additional 13 families were recorded for overall pteropodid diet, but only one interaction was recorded for each, and thus not included here.Published as part of Aziz, Sheema Abdul, McConkey, Kim R., Tanalgo, Krizler, Sritongchuay, Tuanjit, Low, Mary-Ruth, Yong, Joon Yee, Mildenstein, Tammy L., Nuevo-Diego, Christine Ely, Lim, Voon-Ching & Racey, Paul A., 2021, The Critical Importance of Old World Fruit Bats for Healthy Ecosystems and Economies, pp. 1-29 in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 9 on page 15, DOI: 10.3389/fevo.2021.641411, http://zenodo.org/record/467563