L., Ericales: Ericaceae) are buzz pollinated ( De Luca et al. Several important crops including tomato, eggplant ( Solanum melongena L., Solanales: Solanaceae), kiwi ( Actinidia deliciosa Chevalier, Liang & Ferguson, Ericales: Actinidiaceae), and blueberry ( Vaccinium spp. However, the most important supplemental bee pollinator, the honey bee, is incapable of vibrating flowers to remove pollen ( King and Buchmann 2003), and consequently may have a reduced effectiveness as a pollinator of buzz-pollinated plants. Approximately half of all bee species use this type of vibration-assisted foraging (‘sonication’ or floral buzzing Cardinal et al. Generally, in buzz-pollinated plants, pollen-storing anthers open through small apical pores or slits (poricidal anthers), from which pollen can be released in large quantities when vibrated by a pollinator ( Buchmann 1983, Russell et al. Most buzz-pollinated plants lack nectar and rely on pollen provisions to attract and reward pollinators ( Vallejo-Marin et al. In buzz-pollinated plants, bee pollinators use vibrations generated by their thoracic muscles to efficiently remove pollen from flowers with specialized morphologies ( Buchmann 1983, Vallejo-Marin 2019). Therefore, identifying and capitalizing upon the characteristics that make some pollinators better suited than others may considerably enhance crop yield and quality.īuzz-pollinated crops may be particularly suitable to study the extent to which different pollinators affect crop yields. However, supplemental bee pollinators differ in their ability to pollinate different crops, and the deployment of a bee species ill-suited to a given crop, reduces their pollination services ( Greenleaf and Kremen 2006, Macias-Macias et al. Globally, supplemental crop pollination services are predominantly provided by a handful of bee species, namely honey bees ( Apis mellifera) and, to a lesser extent, by some bumblebee species (e.g., Bombus terrestris L., Bombus impatiens Cresson and Bombus ignitus Smith Hymenoptera: Apidae), and stingless bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Meliponini). Insect pollinators are frequently deployed in agricultural settings in an attempt to supplement natural pollinators and to increase the yield and quality of agricultural produce ( Velthuis and Van Doorn 2006, Rucker et al. The production of roughly 35% of the food we eat is dependent on animal pollination services ( Potts et al. Understanding which pollinator groups are best suited to pollinate food crops is imperative for optimizing the yield and quality of agricultural crops worldwide. We conclude that employing native, wild buzz pollinators can deliver important economic benefits with reduced environmental risks and increased advantages for both developed and emerging economies. Finally, we compare strategies for providing bee pollination in tomato cultivation around the globe and highlight how using buzz-pollinating bees might improve tomato yield, particularly in some geographic regions. In contrast, auxin treatment, artificial mechanical vibrations, or supplemental pollination by non-buzz-pollinating bees (including Apis spp.), do not significantly increase fruit weight. Our results show that both supplemental pollination by buzz-pollinating bees and open pollination by assemblages of bees, which include buzz pollinators, significantly increase tomato fruit weight compared to a no-pollination control. Following a systematic review of the literature, we statistically analyzed 71 experiments from 24 studies across different geopolitical regions and conducted a meta-analysis on a subset of 21 of these experiments. (Solanales: Solanaceae), as a case study to investigate the effect of different pollination treatments on aspects of fruit quality. We then use the most commonly cultivated of these crops, the tomato, Solanum lycopersicum L. Here, we provide a list of buzz-pollinated food crops and discuss the extent to which they rely on pollination by vibration-producing bees. (Hymenoptera: Apidae honey bees), cannot produce vibrations to remove pollen. Although more than half of all bee species can buzz pollinate, the most commonly deployed supplemental pollinator, Apis mellifera L. Several important food crops are buzz-pollinated including tomato, eggplant, kiwi, and blueberry. Buzz-pollinated plants require visitation from vibration producing bee species to elicit full pollen release.
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