Quantifying variation among garden plants in attractiveness to bees and other flower-visiting insects
Quantifying variation among garden plants in attractiveness to bees and other flower-visiting insects
复制标题
DOI：
10.1111/1365-2435.12178
复制
发表时间：
2014-04-01
影响因子：
5.2
通讯作者：
Ratnieks, Francis L. W.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Garbuzov, Mihail;Ratnieks, Francis L. W.
1.授粉昆虫在全球范围内正在减少，其中一个主要原因是花朵的损失。随着乡村价值的降低，人们越来越认识到城市地区，特别是花园，对野生动物的好处，包括访花昆虫。许多园丁专门选择对野生动物有吸引力的植物品种。鉴于公众的广泛兴趣，业余爱好者和专业组织都编制了许多推荐品种清单，但似乎没有很好的经验数据基础。然而，这些清单并非毫无价值，是一个明显的起点。显然需要使这一进程建立在更坚实的基础上，更多地以数据为基础，而不是以意见和一般经验为基础。我们收集了两个夏天的数据，通过计算访花昆虫，因为他们在32个流行的夏季开花的花园植物品种在一个专门种植的实验花园，与两个较小的额外的花园在第二年成立，以检查结果的一般性。在英国和其他国家或地区，有成千上万的植物品种可供园丁使用，要进行全面的调查，得出一个完整而权威的清单，是不可能的任务。我们的成果是宝贵和令人鼓舞的。对人眼有吸引力的园林花卉在对昆虫的吸引力方面差异很大，大约100倍。昆虫，特别是蜜蜂和苍蝇，可以吸引大量的不同品种的吸引类型的分布有明显的差异.我们的研究结果清楚地表明，有一个很大的范围，使花园和公园更蜜蜂和昆虫友好的植物选择。通过植物育种创造的园艺改良植物品种，包括杂交种，对昆虫的吸引力不一定较低，在某些情况下比野生型品种更有吸引力。重要的是，我们比较的所有植物都被认为对人类有很大的吸引力，因为它们被广泛用作观赏性园林植物。在花园里帮助昆虫传粉者并不涉及额外的成本或园艺工作，也不会失去美学吸引力。此外，本研究中尝试的植物品种的昆虫友好性的量化方法相对简单，可以形成进一步研究的基础，包括“公民科学”。
1. Pollinating insects are globally declining, with one of the main causes being the loss of flowers. With the value of countryside reducing, urban areas, particularly gardens, are increasingly recognized as of benefit to wildlife, including flower-visiting insects.2. Many gardeners specifically select plant varieties attractive to wildlife. Given the wide public interest, many lists of recommended varieties have been produced by both amateurs and professional organizations, but appear not to be well grounded in empirical data. These lists, however, are not without merit and are an obvious starting point. There is clearly a need to put the process onto a firmer footing based more on data and less on opinion and general experience.3. We collected data over two summers by counting flower-visiting insects as they foraged on 32 popular summer-flowering garden plant varieties in a specially planted experimental garden, with two smaller additional gardens set up in year two to check the generality of the results. With many thousands of plant varieties available to gardeners in the United Kingdom, and other countries or regions, it would have been an impossible task to make a comprehensive survey resulting in a complete and authoritative list.4. Our results are valuable and encouraging. Garden flowers attractive to the human eye vary enormously, approximately 100-fold, in their attractiveness to insects. Insects, especially bees and hover flies, can be attracted in large numbers with clear differences in the distribution of types attracted by different varieties.5. Our results clearly show that there is a great scope for making gardens and parks more beeand insect-friendly by plant selection. Horticulturally modified plant varieties created by plant breeding, including hybrids, are not necessarily less attractive to insects and in some cases are more attractive than their wild-type counterparts. Importantly, all the plants we compared were considered highly attractive to humans, given that they are widely sold as ornamental garden plants.6. Helping insect pollinators in gardens does not involve extra cost or gardening effort, or loss of aesthetic attractiveness. Furthermore, the methods of quantifying insect-friendliness of plant varieties trialled in this study are relatively simple and can form the basis of further research, including 'citizen science'.