ArticleScience advances2021
Widespread vulnerability of flowering plant seed production to pollinator declines.
Article in Science advances, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 78 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
78 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Meta-analysis reveals negative but highly variable impacts of invasive alien species across terrestrial insect orders.Nature communications · 2026Pooled it
- Global meta-analysis shows that threatened flowering plants have higher pollination deficits.Nature communications · 2025Pooled it
- Fire effects on pollination and plant reproduction: a quantitative review.Annals of botany · 2025Pooled it
- Impacts of increased temperatures on floral rewards and pollinator interactions: a meta-analysis.Frontiers in plant science · 2024Pooled it
- Weak evidence base for bee protective pesticide mitigation measures.Journal of economic entomology · 2023Pooled it
- Anthropogenic modification shifts pollinator phenology in the eastern USA.Royal Society open science · 2026Article
- Pollination Under Pressure: Grazing and Nutrient Enrichment Reshape Arctic Pollinator Communities and Interaction Networks.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Light and Pollination Limitation Alter Patterns of Fitness and Phenotypic Selection inEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- Gain Curves, Reproductive Efficiency, and Sex Allocation.Ecology and evolution · 2026Review
- The reproductive biology of Dyckia scrutor (Bromeliaceae): an endangered species endemic to Campos Rupestres.Journal of plant research · 2026Article
- Method comparison of microscopy, metabarcoding, and multispectral imaging flow cytometry for identification and relative abundance analysis of insect-dispersed pollen.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Flower color polymorphism in the peacock anemone (Anemone pavonina) reflects spatiotemporal variation in pollinator abundance.American journal of botany · 2026Article
- Unveiling the Patterns of Wild Bee-Plant Interactions on a Large and Mostly Unexplored Mediterranean Island (Sardinia, Italy).Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Bee (Hymenoptera) bycatch assemblages collected in bowl traps at interfaces of cotton agroecosystems in Alabama.Environmental entomology · 2026Article
- A curated and integrated dataset for exploring global bee-plant interactions.Scientific data · 2026Article
- Herbarium Specimens Reveal Long-Term Decline in Pollination Services Since the 1970s.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Fitness consequences of trait-mediated plant-pollinator interactions.American journal of botany · 2026Article
- The effect of drought stress on the limits and costs of plasticity in floral longevity in response to pollinator decline.American journal of botany · 2026Article
- Pollination and plant reproduction in the Cerrado, the world's most biodiverse savanna.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Characterizing a species-rich and understudied tropical insect fauna using DNA barcoding.GigaScience · 2026Article
18 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
21 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Despite evidence of pollinator declines from many regions across the globe, the threat this poses to plant populations is not clear because plants can often produce seeds without animal pollinators. Here, we quantify pollinator contribution to seed production by comparing fertility in the presence versus the absence of pollinators for a global dataset of 1174 plant species. We estimate that, without pollinators, a third of flowering plant species would produce no seeds and half would suffer an 80% or more reduction in fertility. Pollinator contribution to plant reproduction is higher in plants with tree growth form, multiple reproductive episodes, more specialized pollination systems, and tropical distributions, making these groups especially vulnerable to reduced service from pollinators. These results suggest that, without mitigating efforts, pollinator declines have the potential to reduce reproduction for most plant species, increasing the risk of population declines.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.