Authors: Bihaly, Áron; Kovács-Hostyánszki, Anikó;Sárospataki, Miklós;Piross, Imre Sándor;Pellaton, Raoul;Báldi, András;

In pollination, which is one of the most important ecosystem services, the wild pollinator insects play an invaluable role beside the managed honey bees. Agricultural landscapes can suffer greatly from the lack of these useful insects that can be enhanced in their number and diversity by providing floral resources such as flowering strips or fields. However, we do not know the optimal design and floral composition of these flowering fields in landscapes with different levels of heterogeneity yet.
Therefore, we set up sown wildflower parcels of different designs: 8 landscape pairs of one larger field (half hectare) and three smaller strips (total: half-hectare), sown with 32 native plant species, in either homogeneous (4 pairs) or heterogeneous (4 pairs) agricultural landscapes. We investigated their effects on wild pollinator insect communities by transect sampling method supported by assessment of flower resources.
Based on our results we expect to answer how diversity of flowering plant species, heterogeneity of the surrounding area and design of the flowering fields affect pollinator diversity, species richness and abundance, and we can determine which flowering plant species play a key role.