Determining optimal wildflower patch arrangements to maximize pollination services by wild bees in cultivated blueberry

北美餐桌上每三口食物中就有一口是因为蜜蜂将花粉从一朵花转移到另一朵花而存在的。这些“授粉服务”在很大程度上是由家蜜蜂提供的，但野生蜜蜂发挥了重要作用。我们在这里的重点是为加拿大，特别是弗雷泽山谷(BC)种植的广泛和重要的经济栽培蓝莓作物提供授粉服务。许多蓝莓品种都适应“蜂鸣授粉”，这是一种只有野生蜜蜂才能提供的服务。然而，全球野生蜜蜂的数量正在急剧下降，随之而来的是作物生产力的下降。研究表明，以野花斑块的形式改善栖息地可以吸引和支持野生蜜蜂的数量。然而，目前可用的研究只能用来提出非常笼统的建议，而且还不清楚到底哪些修改对单个农场最有利。因此，弗雷泽山谷蓝莓种植者很难证明投资于昂贵和/或耗时的景观操作是合理的。因此，有必要在平行田间工作的基础上进行建模工作，以提供一种量化手段，比较不同农业景观中不同的野花种植安排。我们的目标是利用实地工作和数学工具来开发一个生物信息模型，该模型可以用来确定在给定的农业景观中，对于给定的种植者来说，什么样的野花斑块将产生最大的作物产量。由于最近的研究表明，不同地区的花粉缺失背后的机制不同，因此我们选择一个特定的地区进行模拟研究是很重要的。我们把重点放在弗雷泽山谷，因为这是加拿大最大的蓝莓种植区，该地区的授粉赤字很大(高达30%)。然而，我们的建模方法和工具将建立一个模板，可用于解决其他蓝莓种植区(如安大略省新斯科舍省)和其他野生蜜蜂授粉作物的相同研究问题。

One in every three bites of food on the North American table exists only because a bee moved pollen from one flower to another. These ``pollination services'' are largely provided by domestic honeybees, but wild bees have an important role. Our focus here is on the pollination services provided to the extensive and economically important cultivated blueberry crops grown in Canada, particularly in the Fraser Valley (BC). Many blueberry varietals are adapted to `buzz pollination,'' a service provided only by wild bees. Wild bee populations, however, are in dramatic decline across the globe, with subsequent reductions in crop productivity.Research suggests that habitat enhancements in the form of wildflower patches could attract and support wild bee populations. Currently, however, the available research can only be used to make very general recommendations, and it is unclear exactly what modifications would most benefit an individual farm. Consequently it is difficult for Fraser Valley blueberry growers to justify investing in expensive and/or time-consuming landscape manipulations. There is thus a need for modelling work, informed by parallel field work, to provide a quantitative means of comparing different wildflower planting arrangements in different agricultural landscapes. Our goal is to use field work and mathematical tools to develop a biologically-informed model that can be used to determine what arrangements of wildflower patches will yield the greatest crop yield in a given agricultural landscape for a given grower. Since recent research has shown that the mechanisms behind pollen deficits vary from one region to another, it is important that we select a particular region for our modelling study. We focus on the Fraser Valley, as this is the largest blueberry growing region in Canada, and pollination deficits in this region are significant (as high as 30%). Our modelling approach and tools, however, will establish a template that can be used to address the same research questions in other blueberry growing regions (e.g. Nova Scotia, Ontario) and in other wild bee-pollinated crops.