POLLINATORS
From page 32
and visit many different
flowers of the same species
over a fairly wide area as they
feed. The indigenous South
African honeybees are
therefore vital to South Africa's
food productivity and can be
managed at the scale needed
for our intensive large-scale
crops.
However, honeybees and
most other pollinators face
threats including diminishing
habitat and forage resources,
pests, diseases and inappropriate agro-chemical regimes
that misuse pesticides or
herbicides in the agricultural
environment.
Conservation of pollinators is
essential for food security and
conservation of biodiversity in
general. The loss in
biodiversity and the adverse
ecological effect that would
follow a broad-spectrum loss
of pollinators is too alarming
Monkey beetle
to contemplate.
Humans are finally realising
that pollination is a service
nature provides that we have
tended to take for granted,
and that we often do little to
encourage until we start to
lose it. Pollination is a vital link
in natural communities,
connecting plants and animals
in key and essential ways.
For when all else fails, for
example when natural
pollinators have been wiped
out by pesticides or pollution,
human intervention becomes
necessary ~ as Chinese
farmers have found to their
chagrin. There, vast numbers
of field workers are to be
found at pollination time
working slowly through
orchards armed with little
34
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Calliphorid fly
feather dusters, pollinating
flowers by hand.
The wealth of types of
pollinators ~ from butterflies
to bees to birds and bats ~
and the wealth of variety
within flowering plants have
stimulated each other's
evolution, leading to a
remarkable diversity and
often beautiful adaptations
between flowers and
pollinators.
Pollination is a service that is
key to agriculture and the
demand for pollinators grows
as the need for agricultural
productivity increases.
Pollinators have real commercial value, although this is not
always appreciated.
Continued on page 35