2026-04-14T06:11:31Zhttps://recercat.cat/oai/requestoai:recercat.cat:20.500.12327/22712025-10-22T11:04:00Zcom_2072_4428com_2072_4427col_2072_487898
RECERCAT
author
Nabaes Jodar, Diego N.
author
Pérez-Méndez, Néstor
author
Botías, Cristina
author
Garibaldi, Lucas A.
author
Hunicken, Pablo L.
author
Velado-Alonso, Elena
author
Zaragoza-Trello, Carlos
other
Producció Vegetal
group
Cultius Extensius Sostenibles
2025-10-22T11:04:00Z
2025-10-22T11:04:00Z
2023-05-17
Nabaes Jodar, Diego N., Néstor Pérez-Méndez, Cristina Botías, Lucas A. Garibaldi, Pablo L. Hunicken, Elena Velado-Alonso, Carlos Zaragoza-Tello. 2023. “Removing non-crop flowers within orchards promotes the decline of pollinators, not their conservation: A comment on McDougall et al. (2021)”. Insect Conservation and Diversity. doi: 10.1111/icad.12648
1752-458X
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12327/2271
https://doi.org/10.1111/icad.12648
1. Abundant and diverse floral resources are needed for the preservation of pollinator populations and the services they provide to human societies. However, pollinators are negatively affected by several agricultural practices, among which pesticide use and ‘weed’ removal stand out.
2. McDougall et al. (2021) published a paper titled ‘Managing orchard groundcover to reduce pollinator foraging post-bloom’, where they propose removing the within-field flowering ground vegetation after the mass flowering period of the crop ends, to reduce pesticide exposure.
3. They consider this is a bee conservation strategy, after observing it reduces the abundance and diversity of pollinators within the crop. However, despite assuming this implied a realisation of an expected reduction in pesticide exposure, this was not quantified.
4. Here, we give three main arguments against the proposal of the authors, that is, the need for providing accessible, sufficient, safe and seasonally-spread feeding resources to crop pollinators, the potential role of diverse floral resources in their pesticide tolerance, and the urgent need to reduce pesticide use and impact in agriculture.
eng
Copyright © 2023 Royal Entomological Society.
Removing non-crop flowers within orchards promotes the decline of pollinators, not their conservation: A comment on McDougall et al. (2021)
info:eu-repo/semantics/article