About this Research Topic

Background

About one-third of the world's crops depend on pollinators to guarantee seeds or fruit production and, the majority of wild flowering plants are animal pollinated. Recently a global decrease in pollinator populations has been observed, which may be due to the different threats they face within agroecosystems such as land-use changes, monoculture, excessive use of agrochemicals, the presence of parasites and emerging infectious diseases. As a consequence, the loss of pollinators may cause pollen limitation in cultivated plants and a reduction in food production. Another serious problem is that most of the studies focus only on commercial pollinators such as honeybees and bumblebees. This causes a large information gap regarding the situation for the rest of the wild species which are of great importance. Therefore, studying how these drivers affect wild pollinator populations and the pollination dynamics is a priority to conserve and improve pollination services in agroecosystems for sustainable agriculture and food security.

In this Research Topic, we aim to collect recent evidence about the impact of the threats observed within agricultural practices and agricultural areas on wild pollinators and the potential effective strategies to conserve pollination services in agroecosystems. To achieve this goal, we will bring together research from different fields involving the areas of agroecology, ethnology, biology, entomology, mammalogy, ornithology, toxicology to determine current knowledge of pollinator services in agroecosystems and propose the conservation strategies to enhance and maintain the pollinator services for sustainable agriculture.

We welcome manuscripts that contribute to the “Conservation of pollination services for sustainable food production”. Themes covered in this Research Topic include, but are not limited, the following:

-Wild pollinator management
-Pollination ecology
-Pollinator behavior
-Insect ecology
-Crop management
-Conservation strategies for pollinators
-Importance of butterflies, moths, beetles, flies in food production
-Importance of mammals and birds in food production
-Traditional or cultural practices that favor wild pollinator conservation

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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