Pollinators as bioindicators of the state of the environment: species, activity and diversity

Pollinators and pollination are crucial in the functioning of almost all terrestrial ecosystems including those dominated by agriculture because they are in the front line of sustainable productivity through plant reproduction. Pollinators are bioinidicators as individuals and populations in that they can be used to monitor environmental stress brought about by introduced competitors, diseases, parasites, predators as well as by chemical and physical factors, particularly pesticides and habitat modification. Honeybees an useful as samplers of the environments in which they are kept and have been used to assess atmospheric and other types of pollution. Pollinator guildes offer new means of assessing ecosystemic health because the species diversity and abundance relationship is changed from the log-normal standard expected from ecological principles and niche theory. (C)1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.