21Vertebrate pollinators are increasingly threatened worldwide, but little is known about the 22 potential consequences of their declines for plants and wider ecosystems. We present the first 23 global assessment of the importance of vertebrate pollinators for zoophilous plant 24 reproduction. Our meta-analysis of 126 experiments on plants revealed that excluding 25 vertebrate pollinators reduced fruit and/or seed production by 63% on average. We found bat-26 pollinated plants to be more dependent on pollinators than bird-pollinated plants (an average 27 84% reduction in fruit/seed production when bats were being excluded, compared to 46% 28 when birds were excluded). Dependence on vertebrate pollinators for fruit/seed production 29 was greater in the tropics than at higher latitudes. With such a large potential impact of 30 vertebrate pollinator loss, there is a clear need for prompt, effective conservation action for 31 threatened flower-visiting vertebrate species. More research is needed on how such changes 32 might affect wider ecosystems. 33 In a nutshell:• We present the first global assessment of the importance of vertebrate pollinators for the reproductive success of the plants they pollinate.• In our meta-analysis, we found that excluding vertebrate pollinators from plants visited by both insects and vertebrate pollinators reduced fruit and seed production by 63%, indicating a strong dependence on these pollinators.• Plants in the tropics and bat-pollinated plants are more reliant on vertebrate pollination than temperate plants and those visited by other vertebrates.• We emphasize the importance of conserving vertebrate pollinators and stress the need for more empirical data on the pollination systems of plants and their vertebrate pollinator communities.Odd page header 1 3Animal pollination is necessary in the life cycle of many plant species. It is estimated that 34 87.5% of the world's flowering plant species are animal pollinated (Ollerton et al. 2011), 35 with 75% of the world's major crops species benefitting to some degree from animal 36 pollination (Klein et al. 2007). Animal pollinated plants are also used for medicines, forage 37 and materials (Potts et al. 2010(Potts et al. , 2016 Ollerton et al. 2011) and play a crucial role in the 38 long-term maintenance of biodiversity and natural ecosystems. While much attention is paid 39 to insect pollinators, the role of vertebrate pollinators is widely recognized. A recent global 40 study revealed that both mammal and bird pollinators are becoming increasingly threatened 41 with extinction over time, with an average of 2.5 species per year having moved one Red List 42 category towards extinction in recent decades (Regan et al. 2015). These bird and mammal 43 pollinator declines are thought to be driven by agricultural expansion, the spread of invasive 44 alien species, hunting and fire (Regan et al. 2015). 45Over 920 species of birds are known to pollinate plants (Whelan et al. 2008) including 46 Nectarinidae (sunbirds), Trochilidae ...

Agricultural productivity can be increased sustainably in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) by reducing crop losses due to insect pest damage. As an alternative to environmentally-damaging chemical pesticides, biological control interventions and botanical pesticides show potential to achieve both high yields and profits. However, synthesized information of their performance and understanding of their adoption among smallholder farmers is limited. Here, 173 studies of biological control interventions and botanical pesticides of insect pests for 35 crops from 20 sub-Saharan countries from 2005 to 2021 were systematically reviewed. Drawing on published datasets, we found that cereals, particularly maize, were the most studied crop (59%). Research on botanical pesticides constituted 32% of the studies, followed by augmentation/introduction biocontrol (29%), and push-pull (21%). Studies evaluating the technical performance of biocontrol interventions dominated (73%), with a regional clustering of push-pull studies in Kenya. Few studies investigated each intervention on each crop type, across different farming contexts and scales, highlighting an urgent need for landscape-scale studies to elucidate land-use impacts on biocontrol effectiveness. Limited evidence also exists on the synergistic effects of biocontrol on multiple ecosystem services and on non-target/beneficial organisms. We found an absence of interdisciplinary studies that addressed the wider indirect benefits of not using chemical pesticides, the social-economic outcomes, and barriers to adoption by farmers, which we argue are necessary to identify pathways to greater adoption and to support policy advocacy of biocontrol interventions in SSA.

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During the main COVID-19 global pandemic lockdown period of 2020 an impromptu set of pollination ecologists came together via social media and personal contacts to carry out standardised surveys of the flower visits and plants in gardens. The surveys involved 67 rural, suburban and urban gardens, of various sizes, ranging from 61.18° North in Norway to 37.96° South in Australia, resulting in a data set of 25,174 rows, with each row being a unique interaction record for that date/site/plant species, and comprising almost 47,000 visits to flowers, as well as records of flowers that were not visited by pollinators, for over 1,000 species and varieties belonging to more than 460 genera and 96 plant families. The more than 650 species of flower visitors belong to 12 orders of invertebrates and four of vertebrates. In this first publication from the project, we present a brief description of the data and make it freely available for any researchers to use in the future, the only restriction being that they cite this paper in the first instance. The data generated from these global surveys will provide scientific evidence to help us understand the role that private gardens (in urban, rural and suburban areas) can play in conserving insect pollinators and identify management actions to enhance their potential.