Pollination of a bee dependent forb in restored prairie: No evidence of pollen limitation in landscapes dominated by row crop agriculture

Abstract

This data set was generated by an experiment wherein we examined how the amount of agriculture surrounding restored tallgrass prairies affects pollination within restorations by deploying sentinel arrays of a native bee-pollinated forb to 8 sites occurring along an agricultural land-use gradient in western Minnesota, USA. We conducted a pollen limitation experiment on our arrays to measure the effect of the landscape surrounding a restoration on pollination, hypothesizing that sites surrounded by more corn and soy, the dominant driver of habitat loss and fragmentation in this system, would experience decreased pollination. We also hand net bees at these sites to test whether agriculture limits bee abundance in these restorations. Very few studies examine both pollen limitation and pollinator abundance in restorations at a landscape scale. Our data set consists of seed set data for individual plants used in our arrays, restoration site information and the proportion agriculture surrounding each restoration, and bee abundance data for each site.