Plant and animal studies

Pollinators — bees, butterflies, flies, and other animals that transfer pollen between flowering plants — underpin both wild ecosystems and global food production, yet their populations have been declining sharply due to habitat loss, pesticide exposure, climate change, and invasive species. Researchers in this area study how plant and animal species depend on one another through mutualistic networks, and how disrupting those relationships ripples outward into ecosystem services like crop pollination and seed dispersal. A central open question is how resilient these networks are: whether species can shift their interactions or ranges fast enough to compensate for losses, or whether fragmented habitats will cause cascading collapses that agriculture and biodiversity cannot absorb. Understanding which pollinator communities are most vulnerable, and which landscape or management interventions can stabilize them, remains an urgent and contested area of investigation.

Works

289,223

Total citations

5,571,899

Keywords

Pollinator DeclineEcosystem ServicesPlant-Animal InteractionsBiodiversityCrop PollinationHabitat Fragmentation