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Quirks and Quarks

Alternative Pollinators Back-up the Bees

As bees are threatened, scientists are interested in better understanding how effective other insects are at pollinating important crops.

Flies, wasps, butterflies, moths and ants all pollinate crop plants

CBC Radio ·
Just a few species of the family of hoverflies, a pollinating insect (Alvesgaspar, cc-by-sa-3.0)
Bees are vital to agricultural crop production because they perform the critical task of pollinating crops to produce seeds and fruits. But threats to bees, due to a range of environmental challenges, has scientists concerned, and not just about the bees.

There are many insects, including flies, butterflies, moths and ants, that also pollinate plants in nature, but their role in pollinating our crops, and their response in the face of the same threats that bees are facing, has not been well studied. Now, Dr. Cory Sheffield, a research scientist and Curator of Invertebrate Zoology at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, and a team of colleagues from around the world, have surveyed all available data on these alternative pollinators and found that their importance has likely been underestimated.

In some crops, where they might have been thought unimportant, they may provide up to half the pollination services that bees do. And while much remains to be understood, there are signs that these alternative pollinators might also be more robust than bees in an uncertain and changing world.

Related Links

- Paper in PNAS
- University of Queensland release
- ABC story
- UPI story
- CBC story
 

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