Wotton, Karl R., Gao, Boya, Menz, Myles H.M., Morris, Roger K.A., Ball, Stuart G., Lim, Ka S., Reynolds, Don R. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8749-7491, Hu, Gao and Chapman, Jason W. (2019) Mass seasonal migrations of hoverflies provide extensive pollination and crop protection services. Current Biology, 29 (13). 2167-2173.e5. ISSN 0960-9822 (Print), 1879-0445 (Online) (doi:10.1016/j.cub.2019.05.036)

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Abstract

Despite the fact that migratory insects dominate aerial bioflows in terms of diversity, abundance, and biomass [1, 2, 3, 5, 6], the migration patterns of most species, and the effects of their annual fluxes between high- and low-latitude regions, are poorly known. One important group of long-range migrants that remain understudied is a suite of highly beneficial species of hoverfly in the tribe Syrphini, which we collectively term “migrant hoverflies.” Adults are key pollinators [7, 8, 9, 10] and larvae are significant biocontrol agents of aphid crop pests [11], and thus, it is important to quantify the scale of their migrations and the crucial ecosystem services they provide with respect to energy, nutrient, and biomass transport; regulation of crop pests; and pollen transfer. Such assessments cannot be made by sporadic observations of mass arrivals at ground level, because hoverflies largely migrate unnoticed high above ground. We used insect-monitoring radars [12] to show that up to 4 billion hoverflies (80 tons of biomass) travel high above southern Britain each year in seasonally adaptive directions. The long-range migrations redistribute tons of essential nutrients (nitrogen [N] and phosphorus [P]) and transport billions of pollen grains between Britain and Europe, and locally produced populations consume 6 trillion aphids and make billions of flower visits. Migrant hoverfly abundance fluctuated greatly between years, but there was no evidence of a population trend during the 10-year study period. Considering that many beneficial insects are seriously declining [7, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19], our results demonstrate that migrant hoverflies are key to maintaining essential ecosystem services.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	radar entomology; aeroecology; Episyrphus balteatus; Eupeodes corolla; syrphidae; biocontrol; aphids; hoverfly; insect migration
Subjects:	S Agriculture > S Agriculture (General)
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Engineering & Science Faculty of Engineering & Science > Natural Resources Institute Faculty of Engineering & Science > Natural Resources Institute > Agriculture, Health & Environment Department
Last Modified:	10 Jul 2019 15:46
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/24761

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