Resilience of Plant-pollinator Interactions in Agroecosystems: Spatio-temporal Effects of Land Use Change

Duration: 2023 – 2027

Decline in biodiversity and ecosystem services is generating negative impacts on human wellbeing. One of the key drivers of these trends is land use change, imposing harmful effects on biodiversity through high land use intensity and homogenization of landscapes. Furthermore, this process is causing the loss of biological interactions vital for important ecosystem functions, such as pollination. Only transdisciplinary approaches enable to create functional solutions for land management in agroecosystems. Thus, this project explores community-, species- and gene-level consequences of land use change on the functioning and resilience of plant-pollinator interactions in Estonian agricultural landscapes, while also tackling socio-ecological drivers of pollinator-friendly landscape management. In an era of global change, this project provides necessary input for sustaining biodiversity in agroecosystems and improves our understanding of the eco-evolutionary effects of land use change.

Project participants: Tsipe Aavik, Virve Sõber, Mari-Liis Viljur, Iris Reinula, Marianne Kaldra, Vete-Mari Kuningas

Funding: Estonian Research Council