Search

Many nature‐based solutions (NBS), including urban greenspaces, urban agriculture and agroforestry, depend upon animal‐pollinated plants to sequester carbon or to provide other ecosystem services. Thus, long‐term success of these solutions also depends upon resilient pollinator communities. Despite their importance to functioning communities, a literature search revealed that 0%–3% of papers on NBS and related topics considered pollinators or pollination. Pollinators were more likely to be considered in the subgroup of papers on NBS related to agricultural production, where 12.5% considered pollination. Conservation of species interactions is essential to conservation of biodiversity and the sustained benefits of NBS. By applying our understanding of the ecology of plant‐pollinator mutualisms to the implementation of NBS, we can promote their functioning under future climatic conditions. In particular, we point to the need to identify keystone plants and pollinators, those species that contribute most to biodiversity maintenance, community stability and ecosystem function, and to leverage these species and their interactions in NBS and conservation efforts. We further advocate for the use of phylogenetic trait‐based analyses to understand the characteristics associated with keystoneness. Synthesis: Resilience of pollination services rests upon the responses of keystone species and their partners, and the likelihood that they continue to express traits that confer mutual benefit under future climates. By understanding the traits of species of outsized importance to their communities, we gain insight into the mechanisms underlying the resilience of pollination services and the NBS that rely on those services in a changing world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shifts in the timing of flowering are a conspicuous biological signal of climate change. These shifts have been documented across the globe for diverse communities. Although many species are flowering earlier, others have exhibited no shifts or delays in flowering., How species respond phenologically will shape interactions both with other community members and with the abiotic environment, altering fitness, abundance and ultimately persistence., To understand if variability in phenological response is influenced by evolutionary history, we tested for phylogenetic signal in shifts in flowering onset for 13 communities representing 116 families across the Northern Hemisphere. We compared the fit of models of neutral evolution (Brownian Motion) with models that incorporate selection (Ornstein-Uhlenbeck)., We found significant signal in whether species had shifted and the magnitude of response, with both traits conforming to an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model of trait evolution., Synthesis. These results show there is global phylogenetic signal in the direction and magnitude of shifts in flowering onset and indicate selection has shaped flowering time responses of related species under climate change; thus, environmentally determined optima may constrain whether and to what degree species respond phenologically to climate change. Our findings further demonstrate the value of testing for phylogenetic signal across multiple communities and comparing multiple models of trait evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]