Honey bees are the most abundant visitors to Australian watermelon but native stingless bees are equally effective as pollinators

Despite the benefits of a diverse approach to crop pollination, global food production remains reliant on low diversity managed pollinators, especially European honey bee (Apis mellifera). To facilitate more robust pollinator management and improve resilience system, it is necessary understand regional variation in pollination ecology crops. Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus [Thunb.] Matsum & Nakai) highly insect pollinator-dependent even though grown globally across many different climate zones, little known about its growing regions Australia, spanning from tropics arid zone. We compared species composition, visitation rates effectiveness dominant floral visitors 15 farms five major watermelon-growing Australia. found that composition differed significantly among regions, but bees were watermelon flower visitor, with relative abundance varying 73% 94%. However, native (including stingless Tetragonula sp., families Megachilidae Halictidae such as Lasioglossum, Homalictus Lipotriches) flies (particularly Syrphidae sp.) also visited transferred pollen onto flowers. In particular, common several deposited similar amounts bees. Our findings indicate Australian industry utilizes bees, assemblage available pollinating taxa provides an additional opportunity for growers specific regions. Pollination service delivery could be increased by deploying populations (e.g., colonies), employing pollinator-safe land practices well exploring methods increasing efficiency colonies.