Environmental change is disrupting mutualisms between organisms worldwide. Reported declines in insect populations and changes in pollinator community compositions in response to land use and other environmental drivers have put the spotlight on the need to conserve pollinators. While this is often motivated by their role in supporting crop yields, the role of pollinators for reproduction and resulting taxonomic and functional assembly in wild plant communities has received less attention. Recent findings suggest that observed and experimental gradients in pollinator availability can affect plant community composition, but we know little about when such shifts are to be expected, or the impact they have on ecosystem functioning. Correlations between plant traits related to pollination and plant traits related to other important ecosystem functions, such as productivity, nitrogen uptake or palatability to herbivores, lead us to expect non-random shifts in ecosystem functioning in response to changes in pollinator communities. At the same time, ecological and evolutionary processes may counteract these effects of pollinator declines, limiting changes in plant community composition, and in ecosystem functioning. Despite calls to investigate community- and ecosystem-level impacts of reduced pollination, the study of pollinator effects on plants has largely been confined to impacts on plant individuals or single-species populations.

中文翻译：

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传粉者介导的景观规模土地利用对草原植物群落组成和生态系统功能的影响——七个假设

环境变化正在破坏全世界生物体之间的互利共生。据报道，由于土地利用和其他环境驱动因素，昆虫数量下降以及传粉昆虫群落组成发生变化，这使得保护传粉昆虫的必要性成为人们关注的焦点。虽然这通常是由于它们在支持作物产量方面的作用，但传粉媒介在野生植物群落中繁殖以及由此产生的分类和功能组装的作用却很少受到关注。最近的研究结果表明，观察和实验的传粉媒介可用性梯度可能会影响植物群落的组成，但我们对这种变化何时会发生以及它们对生态系统功能的影响知之甚少。与授粉相关的植物性状和与其他重要生态系统功能（例如生产力、氮吸收或食草动物的适口性）相关的植物性状之间的相关性，使我们预计生态系统功能会因授粉媒介群落的变化而发生非随机变化。与此同时，生态和进化过程可能会抵消传粉媒介减少的影响，限制植物群落组成和生态系统功能的变化。尽管有人呼吁调查授粉减少对群落和生态系统层面的影响，但授粉媒介对植物影响的研究在很大程度上仅限于对植物个体或单一物种种群的影响。