Czaczkes, Tomer J. and Breuss, Carsten and Kurze, Christoph (2024) High variability in the attractiveness of municipally-planted decorative plants to insects. PEERJ, 12: e17762. ISSN 2167-8359,
Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)Abstract
Insect populations are declining globally. A major driver of this decline is land use change, including urbanisation. However, urban environments can also offer a wide range of floral resources to pollinators, through ornamental plantings, but these can vary widely in their attractiveness to insects. Often, the largest single planter of ornamental plants in an urban area is the municipality. Here we evaluated the decorative plantings carried out by the city municipality of Regensburg, Germany, by systematically surveying insect visitations on different plant types in late summer, when forage is often limited for pollinators. We found a 130-fold difference from the least to the most attractive plants, and high variation in which insect groups were attracted to which plants. While honey bees, which are not a conservation concern, were the most common insect visitors, some decorative plants attracted a very large proportion of wild bees, flies, and wasps. Our results demonstrate that there is great scope for increasing the supply of urban forage to pollinators in general, and specific groups in particular, without requiring new decorative plant types to be sourced or planted. We argue that providing local evidence-based guidance to municipalities offers a quick and potentially cost-neutral method for supporting urban insect populations.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | GARDEN FLOWERS; BEES; POLLINATORS; EVOLUTIONARY; HONEYBEES; RESPONSES; DECLINES; GRADIENT; IMPACTS; SHOW; Urbanisation; Pollinators; Evidence-based policy; Decorative plants; Urban biodiversity |
| Subjects: | 500 Science > 590 Zoological sciences |
| Divisions: | Biology, Preclinical Medicine > Institut für Zoologie > Zoologie/Evolutionsbiologie (Prof. Dr. Jürgen Heinze) |
| Depositing User: | Dr. Gernot Deinzer |
| Date Deposited: | 15 Jul 2025 05:56 |
| Last Modified: | 15 Jul 2025 05:56 |
| URI: | https://pred.uni-regensburg.de/id/eprint/63365 |
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
