No evidence for historical declines in pollination success in hungarian orchids

Abstract

Pollination crisis (the decline of pollinator populations) is a global phenomenon which threatens biodiversity, human welfare and economy. The degree to which different plant populations/species are affected by pollination crisis is still unclear. In this study, long-term herbarium dataset was used to quantify the reproduction rate of Hungarian orchids between 1853 and 2008. We quantified fruit-set rate of 663 specimens belonging to 27 species. Data were available from an average of 10.3±9.3 localities, 76.5±43.2 years, and 23.4±25.6 specimens per species. Herbarium data were validated with field-observed data in case of the different pollination strategies. According to our results, the reproductive success of the vast majority of orchid species has not changed during time and pollination crisis is not apparent in Hungary at least until the end of the 20th century.