Thomas Corodius Sawe
Environmental and habitat conservation is crucial for pollinator’s conservation. However, poor understanding of pollinators’ contribution to agriculture and inadequate information on factors affecting pollinators and pollination services have resulted into little attention and conservation efforts in Tanzania. This study will examine how pollinator availability contribute to crop pollination, factors that threaten pollinator availability, and how pollination conditions can be improved through better management of agricultural and forest landscapes. The project is interdisciplinary through its examination of how the yield production of animal-pollinated crops affects the socio-economy of smallholder farmers in Tanzania, and thus the livelihoods of people.
There are reasons to suspect that pollination conditions for several animal-pollinated crop species in the tropics are increasingly deprived, due in part to a substantial reduction in the cover of mature or secondary forests in these areas. Indeed, several studies from the tropics show that the quality, quantity and stability of pollination service decrease with the distance from natural forest areas (e.g. Sande et al. 2009, Klein et al. 2003. Unfortunately, few such studies are from the African continent compared to Europe, North America or Asia (Gemmill-Herren et al. 2014). Nevertheless, it appears that natural forest areas provide important habitats for pollinators, such as bees, butterflies, beetles and flies. If so, this suggests that forest conservation may contribute significantly to increase yield production of crops that depend on animal pollination. Moreover, even degraded forest areas may harbor persistent pollinator populations. However, very few studies have examined pollinator abundance and diversity across forest degradation gradients, so it is largely unknown if the density of pollinator populations respond linearly to the degree of forest degradation, and if even degraded forests may contain pollinators that contribute to crop pollination.
The projects intends to achieve the following;
• Measure/identify Pollinator’s diversity, abundance and visitation rate: The study intends to understand what groups of pollinators’ i.e species, pollinate agricultural crops in targeted agricultural systems through observation, capture, identifying them and study their activity at different times of the day.
• Determine to what extent, yields of various agricultural crops are limited by pollen availability or pollination service.
• Identify potential effects of pesticide spraying to pollinator’s diversity and abundance.
• Correlate amount of forest and natural habits surrounding agricultural fields with pollinator’s diversity and abundance.
• Measure the economic value of pollination services