Lisa Evans

Plant and Food Research · Pollination and Apiculture

Abstract Despite the benefits of a diverse approach to crop pollination, global food production remains reliant on a low diversity of managed pollinators, especially the European honey bee (Apis mellifera). To facilitate more robust pollinator management and improve the resilience of the production system, it is necessary to understand regional var...

For most food crops the identity and efficiency of pollinators across key growing regions remains a significant knowledge gap that needs to be addressed before we can develop crop-specific approaches for pollination service delivery. Here, we conducted a systematic literature review and meta-analysis on watermelon (Citrullus lanatus (Thunb. Matsum....

Many crop plants rely on insect pollination, particularly insect-pollinated crops which are functionally dioecious. These crops require insects to move pollen between separate plants which are functionally male or female. While honey bees are typically considered the most important crop pollinator species, many other insects are known to visit crop...

Hybrid crop production is more reliant on pollinators compared to open-pollinated crops because they require cross-pollination between a male-fertile and a male-sterile line. Little is known about how stigma receipt of pollen from male-sterile genotypes affects reproduction in hybrids. Non-viable and non-compatible pollen cannot fertilise plant ovu...

Protective covers (i.e., glasshouses, netting enclosures, and polytunnels) are increasingly used in crop production to enhance crop quality, yield, and production efficiency. However, many protected crops require insect polli-nators to achieve optimal pollination and there is no consensus about how best to manage pollinators and crop pollination in...

Individual animals allowed the opportunity to learn generally outperform those prevented from learning, yet, within a species the capacity for learning varies markedly. The evolutionary processes that maintain this variation in learning ability are not yet well understood. Several studies demonstrate links between fitness traits and visual learning...

To achieve maximised and sustainable crop productivity, it is critical that we develop crop-specific strategies for managing pollination. Honey bees (Apis mellifera) and stingless bees (Tetragonula carbonaria) are considered effective pollinators of macadamia (Macadamia integrifolia). The introduction of managed honey bee or stingless bee hives int...

Pollination by insects is critical for the production of many crops worldwide. Crop cultivars vary in a number of traits, but their differing pollination requirements are often overlooked. Kiwifruit (Actinidia chinensis) is reliant on pollen movement between male and female plants, but there has been disagreement in the literature about what its po...

Many commercially grown fruits and vegetables benefit substantially from biotic pollination, worth more than US$ 316 bn to the global economy. Watermelon is one of the most economically important global food crops both in terms of production quantity (118.4 million tons (MT)) and production value (GDP US$ 33.9 million). Here, we review the current...

1. Effective pollination is a complex phenomenon determined by the outcome of the interaction between pollen transfer and a plants’ pollinator dependency, yet most studies investigate pollinator effectiveness without consideration of plant mating system differences. 2. We investigated pollinator effectiveness in three types of blueberry that differ...

Many pollinator species visit multiple crops in multiple regions, yet we know little about their pollination service provisioning at local and regional scales. We investigated the floral visitors (n = 13,200), their effectiveness (n = 1718 single visits) and response to landscape composition across three crops avocado, mango and macadamia within a...

The widespread use of protective covers in horticulture represents a novel landscape‐level change, presenting the challenges for crop pollination. Honeybees (Apis mellifera L) are pollinators of many crops, but their behavior can be affected by conditions under covers. To determine how netting crop covers can affect honeybee foraging dynamics, colo...

Protected cropping can increase orchard productivity; however, enclosed environments can be disruptive to pollinators. Bumble bees (Bombus terrestris) forage under covers, but industries lack guidelines for using them as pollinators. Here conservative stocking rates for bumble bees in covered kiwifruit orchards were identified using empirical manip...

The survey of insect flower visitors to crops dependent on their pollination is an essential component in determining their effectiveness as pollinators. In most cases, different survey techniques are required for different crops because of variation in planting design, floral density, spatial distribution of flowers or where additional factors suc...

Different pollinators may vary in their temporal flower-visitation patterns within crops, potentially extending the period pollination may occur. To assess whether this could be the case in kiwifruit, we conducted standardised observational surveys of insects visiting kiwifruit flowers within 31 orchards at three times: 10:00–11:00, 12:00–13:00 and...

Despite widespread interest in the potential adaptive value of individual differences in cognition, few studies have attempted to address the question of how variation in learning and memory impacts their performance in natural environments. Using a novel split-colony experimental design we evaluated visual learning performance of foraging naïve bu...

A wide variety of insect species provide pollination services in natural and agricultural ecosystems, but in order to quantify their contribution it is necessary to evaluate their effectiveness. An important component of this is to determine their ability to transfer pollen to stigmas which typically requires observers to wait for insects to visit...

The survey of insect flower visitors to crops dependent on their pollination is an essential component in determining their effectiveness as pollinators. In most cases, different survey techniques are required for different crops because of variation in planting design, floral density, spatial distribution of flowers or where additional factors suc...

Despite a presumed fitness advantage for individuals with well-developed cognitive abilities, learning performance is usually found to be highly variable within a population. Although little is currently known about the mechanisms responsible for maintaining such variation, there is correlative evidence to suggest that learning performance may be l...

If the cognitive performance of animals reflects their particular ecological requirements, how can we explain appreciable variation in learning ability amongst closely related individuals (e.g. foraging workers within a bumble bee colony)? One possibility is that apparent 'errors' in a learning task actually represent an alternative foraging strate...

Organisation in eusocial insect colonies emerges from the decisions and actions of its individual members. In turn, these decisions and actions are influenced by the individual's behaviour (or temperament). Although there is variation in the behaviour of individuals within a colony, we know surprisingly little about how (or indeed if) the types of...

White clover (Trifolium repens L.) is grown throughout New Zealand in pasture and as a seed crop in the South Island. This investigation was conducted to determine the number of honey bee visits necessary to fully pollinate white clover flowers; the number of foraging honey bees per hectare required to reach the maximum seed number per floret; and...

Commercial hybrid vegetable seed production involves movement of pollen between two distinct groups of plants (parent lines) - a pollen donor and seed production lines. The aim of this study was to observe the distribution and behaviour of honey bees (Apis mellifera) on hybrid radish (Raphanus sativus L.) crops in New Zealand. Honey bees were obser...

Avocado trees typically have a low (>0.3%) fruit set. This means physiological studies on fruit development are difficult to carry out. This investigation was conducted to determine which avocado flowers are most likely to set fruit. Inflorescences at the tip of a floral shoot had significantly higher fruit set (P<0.05) than inflorescences at the b...