Global trends, research progress and knowledge mapping of plant–pollinator interactions through bibliometric analysis (1984 to 2023)

ABSTRACT

Plant–pollinator networks are one of the key species interactions necessary for maintaining ecosystems, ecosystem services, and the economic benefits they bring. The main aim of this investigation is to identify the global trends and research progress in the domain of plant–pollinator interactions including global co-operation, research hotspots, main authors, the number of publications, highly cited articles, and various trends in the last 40 years. Published literature on plant–pollinator interactions was obtained from the Scopus database. Software such as biblioshiny and VOSviewer was used for visualization and analysis of data including co-authorship, co-citations, and co-occurrence networks. In total, we evaluated 3376 publications published from January 1984 to May 2023, and found that 2019 was the most productive year, with an overall growth rate of publications at 13.11%, indicating a positive increase in publications in the future. The outcome of the study will contribute to future research areas of interest and provides emerging hot topics that can leverage future research.

Key policy insights

• The plant–pollinator interaction is a mutual relationship through the exchange of goods or services between plant and animal species.

• In this study, the global trends, research progress, global co-operations, research hotspots, main authors, number of publications, highly cited articles, and various trends in the last 40 years were evaluated.

• The United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom were the most productive countries, and the highest level of collaboration was also observed among these three countries.

• S.D. Johnson has authored the highest number of related publications, and the journal Oecologia is ranked first with the maximum number of published articles on the subject.

• Through keyword co-occurrence analysis, we obtained five clusters, generating five research themes.

KEYWORDS:

• Pollinators
• climate change
• reproductive biology
• mutualism
• ecosystem services

Acknowledgements

We thank the Graphic Era Deemed to be University, Dehradun, for their help and support during this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemnetary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/14888386.2023.2258836

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pooja Singh

Pooja Singh is a doctoral student at Graphic Era Deemed to be University, Dehradun. Her research interests include plant–pollinator interactions, plant reproductive biology and plant phenology.

Baby Gargi

Baby Gargi is a doctoral student at Graphic Era Deemed to be University, Dehradun. Her research interests include high-altitude medicinal plants and their ethnobotanical and pharmacological applications.

Prabhakar Semwal

Prabhakar Semwal is an assistant professor at Graphic Era Deemed to be University, Dehradun. His current research interest lies in exploring plant–pollinator interactions, reproductive biology, genetic and chemical diversity of Himalayan plants for their conservation and sustainable utilization.

Vishal Tripathi

Vishal Tripathi is an assistant professor at Graphic Era Deemed to be University, Dehradun. His research interest lies in exploring plant–microbe interactions as a tool for ecological restoration and land reclamation.