WCS 3-Sentence Science

Tropical Crops Need Bugs

June 14, 2019

Credit: Catalina Gutierrez-Chacon

Each year, Wildlife Conservation Society scientists publish more than 300 peer-reviewed studies and papers. “WCS 3-Sentence Science” is a regular tip-sheet — in bite sized helpings — of some of this published work.

Here we present the work by the WCS Colombia program’s Catalina Gutierrez-Chacon on the pollination role of insects in the Hymenoptera order:

1. Hymenoptera, a large order of insects that contains bees and wasps, is the main group of pollinators in agricultural systems, yet little is known about the role they play in pollination networks and the dependence of plants on specific pollinators in tropical agroecosystems.
2. Researchers in Valle del Cauca, Colombia looked at the time pollinators visited flowers and the morphological traits of plants and pollinators.
3. They found that floral abundance and body mass of Hymenoptera influence the length of visit, which might affect the quality of pollination.

Study and Journal: “Functional structure and patterns of specialization in plant-pollinator relationships of an agroecosystem in Valle del Cauca, Colombia” from Acta Biologica Colombiana
WCS Co-Author(s): Catalina Gutierrez-Chacon, Rural Landscapes Coordinator, WCS Colombia Program

For more information, contact: Stephen Sautner, 718–220–3682, ssautner@wcs.org.