This PhD project is part of a multidisciplinary research program that will investigate ways agri-environmental measures may best be used to preserve wild plant pollination in agricultural landscapes. Pollinators have faced serious declines in farmland during the past centuries and there are fears that crop pollination may be at risk. Less focus has been on consequences for pollination of wild plants. However, pollinator declines may be one reason for the decline of many plants in farmland. This project will focus on the importance of pollinators for wild plant pollination in farmed landscapes and on measures to mitigate the declines of pollinators and wild plant pollination. The project will determine if there is parallel variation in pollinator communities and pollination success of focal plant species. In particular, we will focus on the consequences of changes in community composition of pollinators, e.g. through spill-over effects from agriculturally subsidised generalist pollinators into conservation areas. Furthermore, use of feral pollinators is one way to mitigate effects of loss of the ecosystem service crop pollination; here we will study if this has consequences also for the pollination of wild plants. The work will range from landscape-wide surveys of plants and pollinators to detailed experiments on the dependency of wild plants on insect pollination and consequences of community composition for wild plant pollination. An important part of the project will be to evaluate the possible consequences of agri-environment schemes (and other agri-environmental measures) on pollinators and subsequently on wild plant pollination, to propose cost-efficient ways to mitigate deterioration of wild plant pollination in agricultural landscapes. The project is a collaboration with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala, and will link to the collaboration with the foremost pollinator ecologists in the European project STEP- Status and Trends of European Pollinators (www.step-project.net).Last Day of Applying 2011-03-17 Further information can be obtained from http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=24914&Dnr=378311&Type=EU
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