Agricultural Intensification and Land Conversion Affecting Pollinator Diversity and Reproductive Success of Native Flora

Abstract

Pollinators play a crucial role in the maintenance of agricultural productivity, ecosystem stability, and reproductive success of flowering plants. But, with rising agricultural intensification and the fast pace of land conversion, loss of pollinator diversity has become one of the greatest threats to pollinators around the world. The impact of intensive farming and habitat loss on pollinator populations and the reproductive success of native plants in various land uses is explored in this study. The ecological field study took place in three different habitat types: intensive agriculture, moderately managed agriculture, and semi-natural habitat. Pollinator diversity, frequency of visits, fruit set, seed set, and crop yield performance were measured via transect observations, pan traps, and sweep net sampling. To assess ecological relationships between variables, statistical analyses such as One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Pearson correlation, and regression analysis were used. The results indicated that there were substantial differences in the diversity of pollinators and reproductive success among land-use types. The highest pollinator species richness (45 species) and Shannon diversity index (