Mapping crop pollination in Europe

Crop pollination is an extremely important ecosystem service, and as much as 10 per cent of European food production depend on insect pollination. Nesting sites are threatened by land-use changes, and land managers need reliable models of pollination service delivery. Using GBIF-mediated occurrences, researchers developed distribution models for 12 bee species, and by combining distributions with crop data, they created a pollination delivery map and calculate indices for potential pollination provision and need at both species and country level. In terms of richness, the highest diversity is found in south and central Europe. Two species in particular (Anthophora plumipes and Apis mellifera) provide the highest level of pollination service. Values for delivery and efficiency on a country level do not correlate, as Denmark, for instance, shows one of the highest values of pollination delivery, but a low value in terms of efficiency.