Summary
Limited research has been done on pollinators in the boreal forest and on native pollinators in general. The importance of such research has been highlighted by many recent global pollinator declines. The objective of this study is to determine whether forest cover type and retention harvesting has an effect on the abundance of pollinators in the boreal forest. Research was carried out at the Ecosystem Management Emulating Natural Disturbance (EMEND) located approximately 90km northwest of Peace River, Alberta which was set up in 1998. Control compartments of all four forest cover types (deciduous dominant, deciduous with spruce understory, mixed woods, and coniferous dominant)(n=12) and the 50% retention compartments in the deciduous dominant and coniferous dominant forest cover types (n=5) were sampled. Pollinators were caught by net along the baselines in these compartments. There was no statistically significant effect of forest cover type on pollinator abundance (F3,35=1.45, P=0.212). However, there was a significant effect of collection period due to differences in the abundance of hoverflies between collection periods (F2,24=8.22, P=0.00191), probably due to a decrease in flower abundance and diversity through the summer. There was also no significant effect of harvesting (F1,30=0.375, P=0.684) or forest cover type in harvesting treatments (F1,30=0.874, P=0.433) but there was a significant interaction between the two factors resulting from differences in bee abundance in harvesting treatments (F1,19=6.86, P=0.0169). The collection period was again significant due to differences in hoverfly abundance between collections (F2,19=5.43, P=0.0136). The lack of significance of harvesting may indicate that harvested stands have recovered to a point where they are no longer significantly different from the control stands. The large flight range of some species may also limit the effect of harvesting.