It is now widely acknowledged that declines in pollinators and pollination are occurring worldwide, and such declines are likely to be problematic for crop production and maintenance of biodiversity. A leading hypothesis is that these declines are partly a function of processes occurring at larger, landscape scales. This hypothesis has stimulated the synthesis of often disparate fields in ecology: landscape, community, behavioral, and pollination ecology. There is therefore a tremendous opportunity for landscape ecologists to apply theory and tools from our discipline to inform these future conservation and restoration efforts. For instance, issues of scale, landscape composition and configuration, and functional connectivity all have at their core fundamental ideas and approaches from landscape ecology. The goal of this special section of Landscape Ecology is therefore to further motivate landscape ecologists to pursue both fundamental and applied aspects of landscape-pollination ecology. We have assembled seven leading-edge example manuscripts from a burgeoning field that merges landscape and pollination ecology. The articles in this special section reflect some consistent themes in landscape ecology – for instance, the importance of scale, landscape heterogeneity, matrix effects, as well as the independent effects of habitat loss and fragmentation. It is remarkable how consideration of these themes has only recently begun to creep into the pollination ecology and conservation literature. We conclude by presenting future research directions which we think will be fruitful in the field of landscape pollination ecology.
