Preserving species diversity is critical to ensure ecosystem functioning; however, different compo-nents of diversity might respond to human disturbance in different ways. Similarly, trophic levels might haveuncoupled responses to the same disturbance, thus ameliorating or aggravating the persistence of ecological com-munities. In this study, we analysed how the density, richness and evenness offlowers and pollinators respondto four levels of woodland thinning intensity (0, 30, 50 and 70% of woodland basal area removed) over 2 yearsin three contrasting sites. We found a mismatch in the response offlowers and pollinators to thinning. Flowerdensity and richness had disparate responses, depending on the site and year, while evenness did not changewith thinning. In contrast, pollinator density and richness, but not evenness, consistently increased with thinningamong years and sites. These results suggest that thinning has a great influence on pollinators through changesin abiotic conditions and, perhaps,flower attractiveness rather than through small-scale changes inflower densityand richness. At the site where treeflowers were absent, bee pollinator community composition was impover-ished, suggesting that trees provide importantfloral resources to pollinators. Ourfindings indicate that distur-bance may diminish local plant abundance and richness, but pollinator abundance and richness are enhancedafter intense thinning at small scales.
