Pollination services are resilient to an extreme climatic event and mitigate crop yield declines

Abstract Extreme climatic events pose a threat to pollinators and their ecosystem services to agriculture. Yet little remains known on how pollinator communities respond to many climate shocks and experimental studies on crop pollination remain worryingly absent. Here we examined the effects of an extreme flooding event on pollinator communities in Nepal, and conducted insect exclusion experiments to quantify potential impacts on pollination services to two globally-important crops (oilseed mustard and buckwheat). We found that flooding led to lower pollinator abundance as a whole and significantly altered community composition. While social bees ( Apis florea, A. cerana, A . dorsata, and A . mellifera ) did not show large changes, flooding effects were instead stronger and more consistent for solitary bee species – and in particular mining and ground nesting guilds ( Halictus , Lasioglossum , Andrena spp.). Despite these impacts, pollinator services to both crops remained resilient to flooding. Although buckwheat in particular incurred significant yield loss due to flooding, due to the resilience of pollination services pollinators made a proportionally greater contribution to yield in flooded fields (54.1% of yield) than in non-flooded fields (36.1%). Our study highlights how extreme events such as flooding can disrupt pollinator communities, but also how pollination services can still show resilience to such shocks, and buffer against crop yield loss. Accordingly, we discuss the need to incorporate pollination into strategies for agricultural climate adaptation and disaster risk reduction, and call for more knowledge on the response of pollination services to extreme climatic events – in particular for smallholder farming systems.