Honeybees are the most effective pollinators of mango, but only wild pollinators increase the yield of commercial fruits

Abstract

Even when several crops depend on animals for their pollination, the effectiveness of each floral visitor remains largely unknown. With this information, conservation practices of the most effective pollinators could be implemented, improving the fruit yield of these crops. Specifically in mango, a globally valuable crop dependent on pollination by insects, little is known about the effectiveness of their floral visitors. Across five quantitative and qualitative metrics (abundance of floral visitors, visitation rate, proportion of legitimate visits, pollen deposition, and probability of tree change), and over two consecutive years, we compare for the first time the effectiveness of all the floral visitors of a self-incompatible mango cultivar (‘Ataulfo’) and evaluate whether the abundance of the exotic honeybee or wild pollinators influences the production of commercial (well-developed) and malformed fruits (known as nubbins) in one of the largest productive regions of mango in Mexico, the largest exporter worldwide. Our results clearly demonstrate that a diverse array of floral visitors, primarily hymenopterans and dipterans, were effective pollinators of ‘Ataulfo’ mango. Even when honeybees were the most effective pollinators in both years due to their greater abundance, only the the pollination effectiveness of wild pollinators was positively related to the yield of commercial fruits and negatively correlated with the incidence of nubbins, probably due to their greater mobility between cultivars. These findings highlight the importance of wild pollinators in the mango industry and the need to implement conservation practices to maintain these pollinators to ensure the growing global demand for this cultivar.