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Research article2023Peer reviewedOpen access

Stable pollination service in a generalist high Arctic community despite the warming climate

Cirtwill, Alyssa R.; Kaartinen, Riikka; Rasmussen, Claus; Redr, Deanne; Wirta, Helena; Olesen, Jens M.; Tiusanen, Mikko; Ballantyne, Gavin; Cunnold, Helen; Stone, Graham N.; Schmidt, Niels Martin; Roslin, Tomas

Abstract

Insects provide key pollination services in most terrestrial biomes, but this service depends on a multistep interaction between insect and plant. An insect needs to visit a flower, receive pollen from the anthers, move to another conspecific flower, and finally deposit the pollen on a receptive stigma. Each of these steps may be affected by climate change, and focusing on only one of them (e.g., flower visitation) may miss important signals of change in service provision. In this study, we combine data on visitation, pollen transport, and single-visit pollen deposition to estimate functional outcomes in the high Arctic plant-pollinator network of Zackenberg, Northeast Greenland, a model system for global warming-associated impacts in pollination services. Over two decades of rapid climate warming, we sampled the network repeatedly: in 1996, 1997, 2010, 2011, and 2016. Although the flowering plant and insect communities and their interactions varied substantially between years, as expected based on highly variable Arctic weather, there was no detectable directional change in either the structure of flower-visitor networks or estimated pollen deposition. For flower-visitor networks compiled over a single week, species phenologies caused major within-year variation in network structure despite consistency across years. Weekly networks for the middle of the flowering season emerged as especially important because most pollination service can be expected to be provided by these large, highly nested networks. Our findings suggest that pollination ecosystem service in the high Arctic is remarkably resilient. This resilience may reflect the plasticity of Arctic biota as an adaptation to extreme and unpredictable weather. However, most pollination service was contributed by relatively few fly taxa (Diptera: Spilogona sanctipauli and Drymeia segnis [Muscidae] and species of Rhamphomyia [Empididae]). If these key pollinators are negatively affected by climate change, network structure and the pollination service that depends on it would be seriously compromised.

Keywords

diptera; Dryas; flower visitor; phenology; pollen deposition; pollen transport

Published in

Ecological Monographs
2023, Volume: 93, number: 1, article number: e1551Publisher: WILEY

        SLU Authors

      • Associated SLU-program

        SLU Plant Protection Network

        Sustainable Development Goals

        SDG13 Climate action
        SDG15 Life on land

        UKÄ Subject classification

        Ecology
        Environmental Sciences

        Publication identifier

        DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ecm.1551

        Permanent link to this page (URI)

        https://res.slu.se/id/publ/119345