The vast majority of studies on pollination focus on bees, but a tremendous variety of pollinators come from other groups. Many of these other pollinators provide unique and indispensable ecosystem services, including to crops. Bats are a useful example, with many plants such as durian, agave, baobab, and other key species heavily reliant on them. I will discuss several case studies, with focus on tropical Asia, and more broadly explore the global distribution of bat pollination services. Furthermore, given the growing recognition of the need to map and prioritise the protection of ecosystem services, new methods to better map and quantify these are needed if they are to be factored into spatial planning approaches. Here we explore new ways to map these services across the landscape, to add additional dimensions to existing approaches of mapping and conserving ecosystem service provision. We also explore a landscape based approach to integrating conservation approaches to maintain pollination provision and services in agricultural landscapes, and to thereby ensure that we can maintain both biodiversity and key services in these landscapes. Additionally we discuss the use of new tools and approaches for mapping and prioritizing species with scant distributions, including both insect pollinators and our bat-cave vulnerability index, to demonstrate how data can be integrated to enable more effective prioritization, which both recognizes the vulnerability and diversity of species, as well as the services they provide; thus providing a more holistic mechanism for developing and implementing priorities at the landscape scale.
Mapping the distribution of key pollinator groups and pollination service provision across landscapes