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A Pollination Crisis? Not in the Case of Hungarian Orchids!

Paper Reviewed
Molnar, V.A., Loki, V., Takacs, A., Schmidt, J., Tokolyi, J., Bodis, J. and Sramko, G. 2015. No Evidence for Historical Declines in Pollination Success in Hungarian Orchids. Applied Ecology and Environmental Research 13: 1097-1108.

Introducing their study of the potential for a climate-change-induced decline in the well-being of Hungarian orchids due to possible declines in pollinator populations -- to which phenomenon they gave the name of pollination crisis -- Molnar et al. (2015) used a long-term herbarium dataset to quantify the reproduction rates of Hungarian orchids between 1853 and 2008. More specifically, they quantified the fruit-set rates of 663 specimens belonging to 27 different species, based on data from an average of 103 localities, 76.5 years and 23.4 specimens per species, which data they validated with field observations in the case of species having different pollination strategies. And what findings did this grand endeavor produce?

The seven Hungarian scientists report, first of all, that the Herbarium data "were validated with field-observed data in the case of the different pollination strategies." And according to their results, as they put it, "the reproductive success of the vast majority of orchid species has not changed during time and pollination crisis is not apparent in Hungary," at least (as they add) over the period of their analysis. Given as much, there is little reason to believe that climate warming will interfere with the abilities of various pollinators to preserve existent orchid populations in future years.

Posted 11 June 2016