Insect Pollinators, Major Threats and Mitigation Measures
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EDITORIAL
Insect Pollinators, Major Threats and Mitigation Measures CSS PIRES1, MM MAUÉS2 1
Embrapa Recursos Genéticos e Biotecnologia, Brasília, DF, Brasil Embrapa Amazônia Oriental, Belém, PA, Brasil
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Animal pollination is a regulating ecosystem service as it is the basis for plant reproduction, fruits and seeds production, thus essential for human wellbeing and ecosystem health (IPBES 2016). Around 87% of plant species in the world depend on animals (insects, birds, mammals) to some degree for pollination. In the tropical regions this percentage may reach 94% (Ollerton et al 2011). Moreover, 75% of the world’s agricultural crops depends, at least partially, on animal pollination and the annual value of global crops directly affected by pollinators ranges from US$235 to US$577 billion (IPBES 2016). In Brazil, pollinators contribution to agriculture is estimated in US$14 billion per year (Wolowski et al 2019). The vast majority of pollinator species are wild insects, including species of bees, some species of flies, butterflies, moths, wasps, beetles, and thrips. Due to their dependence on floral resources such as pollen and nectar, bees, with approximately 20,000 species described worldwide, and around 5000 of which occurring in the Neotropics, represent the main group of pollinators of wild and cultivated plant species. Pollination by bees significantly contributes to the production of 1/3 of world food crops. However, the importance of other insect groups in maintaining the pollination services in natural and agricultural environments cannot be neglected (Rader et al 2016). Despite recent advances in knowledge, studies related to the role of bees and other groups of insects as pollinators remain poorly understood (Dirzo et al 2014, Eisenhauer et al 2019). To further complicate matters, in recent decades, losses of managed bee colonies in North America (BIP 2020) and many European countries (COLOSS 2020), and severe declines in wild insect populations (Eisenhauer et al 2019, Montgomery et al 2019, Sánchez-Bayo & Wyckhuys 2019) have been reported, which are of great concern to researchers, beekeepers and the general public alike. The loss of insect species is extremely worrying, especially in the tropical regions of the globe, where the vast majority of species are still unknown and the rates of deforestation and forest degradation, one of the major factor of species extinction,
continue to increase from year to year, despite international treaties on biodiversity protection (CBD 2020). In the last decades, an increasing volume of information has been produced, and initiatives to promote and protect pollinators were created at the national and global levels, identifying threats and opportunities for pollinator conservation and sustainable use of pollination. Twenty years ago, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) approved the creation of the International Pollinator Initiative (IPI), which was recommended by The Sao Paulo Declaration (Dias et al 1999), and since then, a Global Action on Pollination S
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