Combined effects of global change pressures on animal-mediated pollination

• Multiple global change pressures are currently impacting animal-mediated pollination.
• Understanding interactive effects is essential for developing mitigation measures.
• We focus on empirical evidence of combined effects of global change pressures.
• We found many positive (synergistic or additive) interactions between pressures.
• However, studies are scarce, highlighting that knowledge is still limited.

Pollination is an essential process in the sexual reproduction of seed plants and a key ecosystem service to human welfare. Animal pollinators decline as a consequence of five major global change pressures: climate change, landscape alteration, agricultural intensification, non-native species, and spread of pathogens. These pressures, which differ in their biotic or abiotic nature and their spatiotemporal scales, can interact in nonadditive ways (synergistically or antagonistically), but are rarely considered together in studies of pollinator and/or pollination decline. Management actions aimed at buffering the impacts of a particular pressure could thereby prove ineffective if another pressure is present. Here, we focus on empirical evidence of the combined effects of global change pressures on pollination, highlighting gaps in current knowledge and future research needs.