10.5061/DRYAD.4B8GTHTCK
Lybbert, Andrew
0000-0001-5408-9985
The Ohio State University
Cusser, Sarah
Michigan State University
Hung, Keng-Lou
The Ohio State University
Goodell, Karen
The Ohio State University
10-year trends reveal declining quality of seeded pollinator habitat on
reclaimed mines regardless of seed mix diversity
Dryad
dataset
2021
The Ohio State University
https://ror.org/00rs6vg23
Columbus Zoo Cooperative Grant
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council
https://ror.org/01h531d29
#PDF-532773-2019
2021-06-04T00:00:00Z
2021-06-04T00:00:00Z
en
352264 bytes
2
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Plant-pollinator interactions represent a crucial ecosystem function
threatened by anthropogenic landscape alterations. Disturbances that
reduce plant diversity are associated with floral resource and pollinator
declines. Establishing wildflower plantings is a major conservation
strategy targeting pollinators, the success of which depends on long-term
persistence of seeded floral communities. However, most
pollinator-oriented seeding projects are monitored for a few years, making
it difficult to evaluate the longevity of such interventions. Selecting
plant species to provide pollinators diverse arrays of floral resources
throughout their activity season is often limited by budgetary constraints
and other conservation priorities. To evaluate the long-term persistence
of prairie vegetation seeded to support pollinators, we sowed wildflower
seed mixes into plots on a degraded reclaimed strip-mine landscape in
central Ohio, USA. We examined how pollinator habitat quality, measured as
floral abundance and diversity, changed over 10 years (2009-2019) in the
absence of management, over the course of the blooming season within each
year, and across three seed mixes containing different numbers and
combinations of flowering plant species. Seeded species floral abundance
declined by more than 75% over the study, with the largest decline
occurring between the fifth and seventh summers. Native and non-native
adventive flowering plants quickly colonized the plots and represented
> 50% of floral community abundances on average. Floral richness
remained relatively constant throughout the study, with a small peak one
year after plot establishment. Plots seeded with high-diversity mixes
averaged 2-3 more species per plot compared to a low-diversity mix,
despite having been seeded with twice as many plant species. Within years,
the abundance and diversity of seeded species were lowest early in the
blooming season and increased monotonically from June to August. Adventive
species exhibited the opposite trend, such that complementary abundance
patterns of seeded and adventive species blooms resulted in a relatively
constant floral abundance across the growing season. Seeded plant
communities followed classic successional patterns in which annual species
quickly established and flowered but were replaced by perennial species
after the first few summers. Long-term data on establishment and
persistence of flower species can guide species selection for
future-oriented pollinator habitat restorations.