Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - 9:40 AM
0777

Integrating wild crop pollinators into integrated pest management

Rachael Winfree, winfree@princeton.edu, Princeton University, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton, NJ, Neal Williams, nwilliam@brynmawr.edu, Bryn Mawr College, Department of Biology, 101 N. Marion Ave, Bryn Mawr, PA, and Claire Kremen, ckremen@nature.berkeley.edu, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, 137 Mulford Hall, Berkeley, CA.

Recent work has shown that wild, native bee species are important crop pollinators. In addition, managed honey bees (Apis mellifera) are currently (2006-2007) undergoing extensive die-offs in North America and Europe in a syndrome termed Colony Collapse Disorder, raising concern about the sustainability of agricultural pollination. I will present our research from New Jersey and Pennsylvania, USA, which demonstrates that wild bees alone fully pollinate watermelon, a crop with high pollination demands, at >90% of farms. Furthermore wild bees provide most of the visitation to several other summer vegetable crops. I will also present data on crop flower visitation by both honey bees and wild bees from before Colony Collapse Disorder (2005) compared with after (2007). This should indicate whether wild bees are affected by Colony Collapse Disorder which is at present unknown. In contrast to studies from other parts of the world, wild bees in our system appear to be robust to intensive human land use at both the local (organic versus conventional farming) and the landscape (natural habitat loss) scales. I will discuss possible reasons for this. Lastly, I will summarize our ongoing work to develop guidelines for agricultural growers who seek to increase wild bee pollination of their crops.