Anikó Kovács-Hostyánszki

Centre for Ecological Research · Institute of Ecology and Botany

Pollinators play a crucial role in ecosystems globally, ensuring the seed production of most flowering plants. They are threatened by global changes and knowledge of their distribution at the national and continental levels is needed to implement efficient conservation actions, but this knowledge is still fragmented and/or difficult to access. As a...

Urbanisation has a strong role in pollinator decline, while properly managed green spaces could promote pollinators – especially bees and butterflies – by providing foraging and nesting habitats in cities. In public spaces, several opportunities exist to help pollinators including rare mowing, flower strip sowing, and bee hotel establishment. Howev...

Human well-being needs healthy ecosystems, providing multiple ecosystem services. Therefore, the assessment of ecosystems on large scales is a priority action. In Hungary, this work (MAES-HU) took place between 2016 and 2022. Twelve ecosystem services (ES) were mapped and assessed along with several ecosystem condition (EC) indicators. Their integr...

Ornamental plants constitute a major source of invasive species. Gaillardia aristata (great blanketflower) is planted worldwide and its escape has been reported in several European countries without ecological impact assessment on the invasive potential. As there is a markedly spreading population with invasive behaviour in Hungary, we aimed to rev...

Plant invasions can lead to homogeneous communities with decreased functional diversity. However, invasive plants, with various morphological and phenological traits, may drive pollinator communities in a less predictable, more complex way. They can promote pollinators compatible with their floral traits, while leaving others without foraging resou...

The general shape (from linear to complex curve), direction (negative and positive) and strength (steepness of the slope) of abundance–impact relationships for different impact metrics are poorly known, despite their importance in understanding and predicting ecological repercussions of invasive species. It is also an open question how the function...

While wild pollinators play a key role in global food production, their assessment is currently missing from the most commonly used environmental impact assessment method, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This is mainly due to constraints in data availability and compatibility with LCA inventories. To target this gap, relative pollinator abundance esti...

Biodiversity declines in an unprecedented way, mostly due to land use change. Restoration interventions proved to be one of the most effective tools to halt the decline, especially in ecosystems such as agricultural fields. Evidence-based, locally adapted recommendations on grassland restoration, however, are often missing, so we present a novel ap...

Összefoglalás. A növényi beporzást sok esetben segítik a beporzók, hozzájárulva a termés- és magképzéshez, szaporodáshoz. Ezzel a beporzók ökológiai és gazdasági értelemben is kiemelt fontosságú szerepet játszanak az emberek életében, környezeti, élelmezési, anyagi és egészségi biztonságuk vonatkozásában egyaránt. Az állati beporzás a zárvatermő vi...

Az általunk vizsgált idegenhonos inváziós fajok a fehér akác (Robinia pseudoacacia L.), a közönséges selyemkóró (Asclepias syriaca L.), valamint a két inváziós aranyvessző faj: a kanadai (Solidago canadensis L.) és a magas (Solidago gigantea Ait) egyaránt kiváló mézelők. Emellett a fehér akác erdőgazdasági jelentősége is nagy. Inváziós jellegüknek...

Mapping and assessing ecosystem services (ES) projects at the national level have been implemented recently in the European Union in order to comply with the targets set out in the EU’s Biodiversity Strategy for 2020 and later in the Strategy for 2030. In Hungary this work has just been accomplished in a large-scale six-year project. The Hungarian...

Within the "Wildflower Budapest" project, an extensive grassland management program started in 2021. We selected ten pairs of extensively (bee pasture) and intensively mown (control) sites to study the effectiveness of the program from the pollinators’ perspective. We visually recorded pollinators and flower units at morphospecies level in 5 circul...

Az Észak-Amerikából származó és Európában dísznövényként ültetett sárga kokárdavirág (G. aristata) kivadulása gyakori jelenség, de inváziós viselkedésére nincs utalás az európai szakirodalomban, míg Magyarországon, egy lokalitáson (Izsák környékén) nagy területen borít parlagokat. A faj vegetációra gyakorolt hatása még feltáratlan, ezért célunk a G...

Invasive alien plant species are usually disliked due to their high pressure on native communities. However, their ecological effects on pollinators are complex: some species provide abundant floral resources, boosting the number of pollinators, while they often disrupt plant-pollinator interactions by outcompeting native plants. Our direct knowled...

Urban green areas offer diverse flower resources for pollinators. Yet, the role of non-native plant species in local plant-pollinator networks is understudied. We explored the effects of plant origin, nationwide distribution, flower color and type on flower visitation by wild bees and honey bees as well as the structure of a plant-pollinator networ...

One of the main goals of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 is to avoid further loss of biodiversity and to restore ecosystems. These efforts can be facilitated by compiling the main research topics related to conservation biology to provide new evidence for the most urgent knowledge gaps, and publicise it to researchers, research funders and po...

Background and aims – Agricultural intensification and loss of farmland heterogeneity have contributed to population declines of wild bees and other pollinators, which may have caused subsequent declines in insect-pollinated wild plants. Material and methods – Using data from 37 studies on 22 pollinator-dependent wild plant species across Europe, w...

High-resolution ecosystem maps increase the efficiency of policy implementation. However due to challenges related to both data and methods, such maps of appropriate scale and quality are still rarely available for nationwide analyses. We present solutions to some typical challenges of national-scale ecosystem mapping through the new Ecosystem Map...

A plain langauge 2 page overview of the paper "Opportunities to reduce pollination deficits and address production shortfalls in an important insect-pollinated crop" designed for non-acedemic audiences (or very busy acedemics). Please feel free to pass this along.

Pollinator decline has attracted global attention and substantial efforts are underway to respond through national pollinator strategies and action plans. These policy responses require clarity on what is driving pollinator decline and what risks it generates for society in different parts of the world. Using a formal expert elicitation process, we...

Conversion of semi-natural habitats, such as field margins, fallows, hedgerows, grassland, woodlots and forests, to agricultural land could increase agricultural production and help meet rising global food demand. Yet, the extent to which such habitat loss would impact biodiversity and wild species is unknown. Here we survey species richness for fo...

The importance of wild bees for crop pollination is well established, but less is known about which species contribute to service delivery to inform agricultural management, monitoring and conservation. Using sites in Great Britain as a case study, we use a novel qualitative approach combining ecological information and field survey data to establi...

Pollinators face multiple pressures and there is evidence of populations in decline. As demand for insect‐pollinated crops increases, crop production is threatened by shortfalls in pollination services. Understanding the extent of current yield deficits due to pollination and identifying opportunities to protect or improve crop yield and quality th...

A two page summary of the paper - this is designed for a non-acedemic audience. Pleasse feel free to disseminate. There is a QR Code for the paper itself included.

Wild bees, hoverflies and wasps are valuable ecosystem service providers in agricultural systems through pollination and biological control, and their species richness, abundance and reproductive success well indicate ecosystem health. However, they are often limited by foraging and nesting resources that are major drivers behind their steep declin...

Multiple anthropogenic challenges threaten nature’s contributions to human well-being. Agricultural expansion and conventional intensification are degrading biodiversity and ecosystem functions, thereby undermining the natural foundations on which agriculture is itself built. Averting the worst effects of global environmental change and assuring ec...

Pollinator decline has attracted global attention, and substantial efforts are underway to respond, through national pollinator strategies and action plans. These policy responses require clarity on what is driving pollinator decline, and what risks it generates for society, in different parts of the world. Using a formal expert elicitation process...

Agricultural intensification may act as an environmental filter shaping invertebrate assemblages at multiple spatial scales. However, it is not fully understood which scale is the most influential. Therefore, we utilized a hierarchical approach to examine the effect of local management (inorganic fertilization and soil properties; within-field scal...

Invasive plants modify native plant communities with serious consequences on plant-pollinator interactions. Invasion by common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca L.) threatens natural and agricultural habitats in Europe, with unknown effects on pollinators. Its special flower structure, habitat requirements and phenology offer novel insights into pollinat...

• Commercially reared cavity‐nesting bees have been studied mainly in large, intensively managed orchards. However, knowledge on wild cavity‐nesting bee and wasp communities and their potential limitations in smaller orchards remain insufficient. • We compared the colonization rate of trapnests, nesting success, parasitism and response to flower re...

Frequency of flower visitations of six bumble bee (Bombus) species was surveyed in Transcarpathia (Ukraine). In four areas of the Game Reserve of Nagydobrony and surroundings five-five sampling quadrates were designated. The frequency of flower visitations of 16 dominant plant species (7 spp. in Fabaceae, 3 spp. in Asteraceae, 3 spp. in Lamiaceae,...

Agricultural intensification is one of the major drivers of biotic homogenization and has multiple levels ranging from within-field management intensity to landscape-scale simplification. The enhancement of invertebrate assemblages by establishing new, semi-natural habitats, such as set-aside fields can improve biological pest control in adjacent c...

Agricultural intensification and associated loss of high‐quality habitats are key drivers of insect pollinator declines. With the aim of decreasing the environmental impact of agriculture, the 2014 EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) defined a set of habitat and landscape features (Ecological Focus Areas: EFAs) farmers could select from as a requir...

The first Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found widespread, accelerating declines in Earth’s biodiversity and associated benefits to people from nature. Addressing these trends will require science-based policy responses to reduce impacts, especially at national to lo...

There is widespread concern regarding declines in bee populations given their importance for the functioning of both natural and managed ecosystems. An increasing number of studies find negative relations between bee species richness and simplification of agricultural landscapes, but the role of land-use intensity and its relative importance compar...

Bees are the most important group of flower visitors providing an essential ecosystem service, namely pollination. Due to the worldwide decline of bees, there should be standardized sampling methods in place to ensure consistent and comparable results between studies. We compared the two commonly used sampling methods of yellow pan traps and transe...

Managing agricultural landscapes to support biodiversity and ecosystem services is a key aim of a sustainable agriculture. However, how the spatial arrangement of crop fields and other habitats in landscapes impacts arthropods and their functions is poorly known. Synthesising data from 49 studies (1515 landscapes) across Europe, we examined effects...

Abstract – Until now four species of the genus Dasypoda Latreille, 1802 were known from Hungary: Dasypoda argentata (Panzer, 1809), D. braccata (Eversmann, 1852), D. hirtipes (Fabricius, 1793) and D. suripes (Christ, 1791). Several Dasypoda specimens collected in the National Botanical Garden,Vácrátót and the Dasypoda material in the Hymenoptera Co...

Climate change is altering the phenology of trophically linked organisms, leading to increased asynchrony between species with unknown consequences for ecosystem services. Although phenological mismatches are reported from several ecosystems, experimental evidence for altering multiple ecosystem services is hardly available. We examined how the phe...

Flowering periods of apple cultivars in the three study orchards

Parameter estimates of the best GLMM model for each response variable Significant terms are in bold, n = 182 in all cases where sample size is not indicated. ‘Control’ was always the reference level of treatment. Significance of the intercept simply means that it is significantly different from zero. Note that in case of binomial models a logit, wh...

List of species used in the community analyses and abbreviations of species names used in NMDS plots

Two-dimensional NMDS plots on species composition of arthropod assemblages Tree data were aggregated for orchards and treatments. Data points of each treatment are connected. Solid red: Advanced1; empty red: Advanced2; solid black: control; empty blue: Delayed1; solid blue: Delayed2. Stress factor was between 0.1 and 0.2 in all cases. For species n...

Summary of the redundancy analysis (RDA) results Two separate analyses were run for each group with treatment and orchard as constrained terms, respectively. Significance of the constraint term was tested by a permutation test (104 permutations). Significant terms are in bold.

Visitation rate of pollinators calculated as individuals/1,000 flowers/15 min in each treatment group Grey boxes indicate those treatments where treatment effect was significantly different from control in the abundance models.

Relationship between the proportion of growing shoots (PGS) on apple trees and aphid abundance in each treatment There was a significant interaction between the effects of treatment and PGS. Solid lines indicate significant slopes.

Number of ripe apples in each treatment Data from only one orchard.

Abundance (mean ± SE) of the harlequin ladybird Harmonia axyridis and all other ladybird species in each treatment

Mean abundance of some groups of arthropods per tree at each sampling occasion in each of the five treatments Red solid circles and line: Advanced1; red empty circles and dashed line: Advanced2; black solid circles and line: control; blue empty circles and dashed line: Delayed1; blue solid circles and line: Delayed2.

Geographical location of the study orchards (kmz)

Relationship between the abundances of aphids and aphidophagous beetles (ladybirds) in each treatment group Each dot represents a single tree. There was no interaction between the effects of treatment and aphid abundance. See details in main text.

Relationship between abundances of spiders and S. pyri in each treatment Solid lines indicate significant effects.

The R code of the statistical analysis

Raw data used for the analyses Each sheet of the file contains a data table used for analysis.

The focus of this report is to present a broad framework for ecosystem services assessment and to test it. The framework aims to illustrate the integrated assessment cycle for practitioners. The framework also places within the other assessment activities, such as scenarios and assessing policies.

The Red-footed Falcon (Falco vespertinus) is a strictly protected raptor species in Hungary (ca 600 pairs). It naturally breeds in rook, crow or magpie nests that are rebuilt every year, however, most of these nests disappeared by the end of the 20th century. In the early 2000's more than a 3,000 artificial nest boxes were installed in the country,...

Simultaneously enhancing ecosystem services provided by biodiversity below and above ground is recommended to reduce dependence on chemical pesticides and mineral fertilisers in agriculture. However, consequences for crop yield have been poorly evaluated. Above ground, increased landscape complexity is assumed to enhance biological pest control, wh...

Landscape composition may influence biodiversity and ecosystem services in agricultural fields. Hitherto, most studies have focused on annual crops and the available information on the impacts of landscape structure in orchards is sparse. In this study, we evaluated the effects of pesticide use as cumulative toxicity on pest and predatory beetle (C...

Worldwide, human appropriation of ecosystems is disrupting plant–pollinator communities and pollination function through habitat conversion and landscape homogenisation. Conversion to agriculture is destroying and degrading semi-natural ecosystems while conventional land-use intensification (e.g. industrial management of large-scale monocultures wi...

Most of the world’s wild flowering plants (87.5%) are pollinated by insects and other animals (established but incomplete), more than three quarters of the leading types of global food crops can benefit, at least in part, from animal pollination (well established) and it is estimated that about one-third of global food volume produced similarly ben...

IPBES