Flower handling time of neglected and commercial pollinators as a behavioral functional trait to evaluate potential pollination success in apple orchards

Pollinators are essential for the resilience of natural ecosystems and food production globally. Despite the undoubted progress that has been made in understanding the role of these animals in agroecosystems, we still have a poor understanding of different aspects of the behavior of more neglected pollinators. Our objective was to understand how the flower handling time of apple blossoms changes between different groups of pollinators, including managed and neglected species, to understand the impact of apple orchard features on this functional behavioral trait. We developed an experimental design where we compared apple flower handling time (response variable) in different groups of managed (commercial honeybees and bumblebees) and wild (solitary bees, beetles, flies, and butterflies) pollinators and the impact of apple orchard feature on this response, using fixed (orchard management, apple variety, locality), continuous (distance between orchards and native forest), and random (orchard size) variables. We found that beetles and flies have longer handling times on apple blossoms than bees, both native and managed, and butterflies. We did find that the pollinator group, locality, and distance between apple orchard and native forest were the most influential predictors of handling time on apple blossoms. Our results suggest that longer flower handling times could be interpreted as a key behavioral functional trait to more pollen load, increasing the likelihood of pollination effectiveness. However, local features of apple orchards and longer distances between them and native forests could impact negatively the foraging behavior diversity, particularly from neglected pollinators.