Dryad
Published May 10, 2023 | Version v1
Dataset Open

A dataset of nectar sugar production for flowering plants found in urban greenspaces

Creators

  • 1. University of Bristol
  • 2. Northumbria University
  • 3. University of Exeter
  • 4. Royal Horticultural Society
  • 5. Cardiff University

Description

  1. Nectar and pollen are floral resources that provide food for insect pollinators, so quantifying their supplies can help us to understand and mitigate pollinator declines. However, most existing datasets of floral resource measurements focus on native plants found in rural landscapes, so cannot be used effectively for estimating supplies in urban green spaces, where non-native ornamental plants often predominate.
  2. We sampled floral nectar sugar in 225 plant taxa found in UK residential gardens and other urban green spaces, focussing on the most common species. The vast majority (94%) of our sampled taxa are non-native, filling an important research gap and ensuring these data are also relevant outside of the UK.
  3. Our dataset includes values of daily nectar sugar production for all 225 taxa and nectar sugar concentration for around half (102) of those sampled. Nectar extraction was conducted according to published methods, ensuring our values can be combined with other datasets.
  4. We anticipate that the two main uses of these data are (1) to estimate the nectar production of habitats and landscapes, and (2) to identify high-nectar plants of conservation importance. To increase the utility of our data we provide guidance for scaling nectar values up from single flowers to floral units, as is commonly done in field studies.

Notes

See the Metadata tab in the Excel file. This explains what each column represents. See also the 'Usage Notes' section within the associated paper. We anticipate that the two main uses of these data are (1) to estimate the nectar production of habitats and landscapes, and (2) to identify high-nectar plants of conservation importance. To increase the utility of our data we provide guidance for scaling nectar values up from single flowers to floral units, as is commonly done in field studies. In addition, researchers could investigate how phylogeny and floral traits predict nectar production or nectar sugar concentration using statistical models.

Funding provided by: Natural Environment Research Council
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000270
Award Number: NE/L002434/1

Funding provided by: Royal Horticultural Society*
Crossref Funder Registry ID:
Award Number:

Files

README.md

Files (53.1 kB)

Name Size Download all
md5:632c20e6ce21b5a431793262261fa580
52.2 kB Download
md5:68f6d50f7ef07571323fa120792828c2
883 Bytes Preview Download