Small-scale restoration in intensive agricultural landscapes supports more specialized and less mobile pollinator species

1. Agriculture now constitutes 40–50% of terrestrial land use globally. By enhancing habitat suitability and connectivity, restoration within agricultural landscapes could have a major influence on biodiversity conservation. However, habitat management within intensive agricultural landscapes may primarily boost abundances of common, highly mobile generalists, rather than vulnerable or endangered species. We studied pollinator community response to small-scale habitat restoration in the intensively farmed Central Valley of California to determine whether restoration could also promote more specialized, less common, and/or less mobile species. 2. Composition of pollinator communities was assessed in five experimental and 10 control (unrestored) sites before and after restoration of native plant hedgerows over an 8-year period, using a before-after-control-impact design. 3. We characterized bee and fly species based on functional response traits [floral specialization, habitat specializat...