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A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11Leaving an unmown strip after mowing a dike can draw pollinators into the remaining vegetation, but a Dutch field experiment found that this early concentration did not last: weeks later, pollinator abundance and species richness were higher on fully unmown sections. The result suggests that refuge strips can offer short-term relief, not that they provide the same support as continuous unmown habitat.
What happened after the dikes were partly mown?
In a 2023 experiment on five south-facing dike sections near Nijmegen in the Netherlands, researchers compared unmown control sections with three sections where about two-thirds of the vegetation was cut, leaving an unmown strip down the middle. Immediately after mowing, pollinator visitation frequency at the partially mown sites rose by 85% and pollinator abundance by 25%, according to the study’s abstract.
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The increase was temporary. In the later sampling period, which extended up to four weeks after mowing, total pollinator abundance and species richness were significantly higher on the unmown controls than at the partially mown sites. The paper describes insects as abandoning the refuges in this later comparison; it does not mean that every insect left at a fixed point, or that all were tracked individually.
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesThe peer-reviewed study, “Unequal pollinator benefits from partial mowing regimes in a field experiment,” was first published online on October 1, 2026, in Insect Conservation and Diversity. The team recorded 28,553 flower-visitation events over 167 observation hours. Its results section reports 4,570 pollinators identified across 94 species, while the abstract reports 4,530 identified to species level; the paper contains this small discrepancy.
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Which pollinators benefited, and which declined?
The response differed among pollinator groups. In the study’s reported comparison at partially mown locations, non-Bombus wild bee abundance declined by 82% and their species richness by 70%. Honeybees, by contrast, maintained high abundance. The paper also reports that the researchers did not observe a compensatory influx of later-season species at the partially mown sites during the study period.
That distinction matters: a surge in visits or total insects immediately after mowing does not necessarily indicate that the refuge is maintaining a diverse pollinator community over time. The later results show why abundance, species richness and the identity of the insects being counted should not be treated as interchangeable measures.
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Why might pollinators leave the refuge?
The experiment documents the timing of the changes, but it does not conclusively establish why pollinators moved or declined. The authors suggest that insects concentrated in a smaller refuge may face greater competition for flowers, which could contribute to later movement. That is a possible mechanism, not a demonstrated cause.
The authors also note that honeybees made up a high share of pollinators in this system, which may help explain why the findings differ from some earlier studies. The results therefore describe a particular community and setting, rather than a universal response to every partial-mowing method.
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What does this mean for mowing dikes?
The authors’ conclusion is that unmown refuges under partial mowing provide initial relief but do not substitute for unmown vegetation. For managers, the study supports treating a retained strip as one part of habitat management—not as evidence that mowing most of a dike preserves the same conditions as leaving it unmown.
Lead researcher Constant Swinkels, an ecologist at Radboud University, recommended taking a landscape-level view: coordinating mowing timing with nearby flowering grassland and staggering mowing among dikes. This recommendation is his management interpretation, not a landscape-schedule comparison tested in the experiment. Maintaining flowering habitat nearby and over time is a practical consideration, but the study did not test alternative schedules or quantify their effects.
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How far can the findings be applied?
The experiment took place from May 30 to June 28, 2023, on five nearby south-facing dike sections along the southern Waal dike near Nijmegen. Three sections were partially mown with a bar mower on June 3; roughly 66% was cut and a central strip was retained. Researchers sampled before mowing, during the first four days afterward, and later. The later comparison should not be simplified into a claim that all pollinators leave within four days: sampling in that period extended up to four weeks, and on average began 14.2 days after the immediate post-mowing period.
Because this was a single early-summer field experiment with one refuge configuration, it does not establish the effects of other refuge widths, mowing dates, mowing methods, regions or pollinator communities. It compared local partial mowing with unmown controls; it did not compare machinery, mowing costs or a range of landscape-wide schedules.
Sources: Swinkels et al., “Unequal pollinator benefits from partial mowing regimes in a field experiment,” Insect Conservation and Diversity, first published online October 1, 2026; Radboud University research summary carried by Phys.org, October 5, 2026.
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