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Sacred church forests as sources of wild pollinators for the surrounding smallholder agricultural farms in Lake Tana Basin, Ethiopia by Tegegne Molla Sitotaw; Louise Willemen; Derege Tsegaye Meshesha; Andrew Nelson is a Environmental Science article available to read on EtoBox.

What is Sacred church forests as sources of wild pollinators for the surrounding smallholder agricultural farms in Lake Tana Basin, Ethiopia about?

Remnant natural forests act as a source of wild pollinators that are potentially relevant for crop pollination for sustaining the food production system of smallholder farms. In the Ethiopian highlands, sacred forests scattered within agricultural landscapes harbour wild pollinators. The contribution of wild pollinators to crop pollination services to surrounding smallholder agricultural farms is largely unknown. In this study, we empirically assessed the effects of Ethiopian church forest habitats on crop flower visitation by pollinators on smallholder farms in Lake Tana basin, Ethiopia. Crop flower visitation rates were recorded in 72 crop fields along distance gradients within a 1500 m buffer zone around 15 church forest patches. We constructed cross-validated generalized additive mixed models (GAMMs) to fit the crop flower visitation rates with fixed effect explanatory variables (distance from forest, forest patch size, forest age, forest functional diversity index, forest proximity index and crop type) that are known to potentially influence pollinator visitation in crop fields. Total flower visitation rates decreased with distance to the forest patches across an agricultural

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Author

Tegegne Molla Sitotaw; Louise Willemen; Derege Tsegaye Meshesha; Andrew Nelson

Publisher

Elsevier BV

Published

2022

Language

EN

Field

Environmental Science (Physical Sciences)