engleski

The importance of pollinating insects for maintaining sustainable agriculture in eastern Croatia

Europe is making significant efforts in estimating the size and stability of insect populations, especially useful pollinating insects (European Pollinator Iniciative, STEP project). In Croatia there is a lack of researches on size and stability of the population of pollinators which are not managed by the man. Pollination by insects enables plant reproduction within natural (conservation of wild plant) and agro-ecosystems (crop production). Furthermore, wild pollinators are indicators of environmental stability and sustainability, thus large wild pollinator populations indicates the clean environment. Importance of honey bees grows in the area of intensive agriculture, from where wild pollinators today are suppressed due to lack of food sources and nest building spaces.Nowadays more than 80% of cultivated crop species highly depends on managed honey bee pollination. In our research, we used pan-traps to estimate pollinator diversity and abundance in three different habitat types: 1) Nature Park “Kopački Rit” as a natural, unpolluted habitat, 2) countryside near Park as semi-natural habitat and 3) agricultural habitat under intensive crop production. During July 2015, different color pan traps were exposed on each habitat during one-day period for the purpose of capturing pollinators. Insects from orders Diptera and Hymenoptera were found in all habitats, Neuroptera were found in natural and semi-natural habitat, Hemiptera were found in natural and agricultural habitat and Coleoptera in semi-natural and agricultural habitat. The most common insects in all habitats were those from the order Hymenoptera. Further researches are necessary for determining the size and stability of the pollinating insects.

pollinators ; insect ; habitat ; pan trap

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