Cryptic species and hidden ecological interactions of halictine bees along an elevational gradient

Mayr, Antonia V.; Keller, Alexander; Peters, Marcell K.; Grimmer, Gudrun; Krischke, Beate; Geyer, Mareen; Schmitt, Thomas; Steffan‐Dewenter, Ingolf

doi:10.1002/ece3.7605

Cited by 18 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 98 publications

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“…Alternatively, pollen may be identified by DNA metabarcoding: a process involving identifying all species in an environmental sample using DNA barcode markers and highthroughput sequencing [25][26][27]. DNA metabarcoding has been used to successfully identify pollen from provisions within nests [28][29][30], honey [31][32][33], proboscises [34,35], guts [36,37], and the legs or bodies of insects [38][39][40] (Supporting Information). Whilst the majority of DNA metabarcoding studies utilize pollen, some have identified raw plant material from within nests to identify the leaf preferences of solitary bees [41][42][43].…”

Section: Methods For Identifying Floral Visitation By Pollinatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As well as increasing the spatial scale of studies, pollen metabarcoding has highlighted the importance of trees and woody species to pollinators, plants with flowers which are often visually restricted and therefore may be missed during observational surveys [31,85]. Whilst most of these spatial assessments of foraging focus on geographic differences, only one study has specifically demonstrated the ability of pollen metabarcoding to elucidate changes in resource use across elevational gradients to better understand how climatic changes in the environment impact foraging [36].…”

Section: How Does Foraging Change Throughout Time and Space?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Using DNA Metabarcoding to Identify Floral Visitation by Pollinators

Lowe¹,

Jones²,

Witter³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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The identification of floral visitation by pollinators provides an opportunity to improve our understanding of the fine-scale ecological interactions between plants and pollinators, contributing to biodiversity conservation and promoting ecosystem health. In this review we outline the various methods which can be used to identify floral visitation, providing a comparison between molecular and non-molecular methods. We review the literature covering the ways in which DNA metabarcoding has been used to answer ecological questions relating to plant use by pollinators and discuss the findings of this research. We present detailed methodological considerations for each step of the metabarcoding workflow, from sampling through to amplification and finally bioinformatic analysis. Detailed guidance is provided to researchers for utilization of these techniques, emphasizing the importance of standardization of methods and improving the reliability of results. Future opportunities and directions of using molecular methods to analyze plant-pollinator interactions are then discussed.

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Section: Methods For Identifying Floral Visitation By Pollinatorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: How Does Foraging Change Throughout Time and Space?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Using DNA Metabarcoding to Identify Floral Visitation by Pollinators

Lowe¹,

Jones²,

Witter³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…Using honey bee-foraged pollen as a tool for angiosperm monitoring One of the main advantages of using pollinating insects for monitoring flowering vegetation is their ability to visit plants in sensitive or difficult to survey areas, such as alpine regions (Mayr et al, 2021;Pornon et al, 2016). However, a major consideration of using managed honey bees for biomonitoring is their potential negative impact on wild pollinators (Cane & Tepedino, 2017;Henry & Rodet, 2018;Valido et al, 2019).…”

Section: 3mentioning

confidence: 99%

Monitoring of honey bee floral resources with pollen DNA metabarcoding as a complementary tool to vegetation surveys

Milla

Schmidt‐Lebuhn

Bovill

et al. 2022

Ecol Sol and Evidence

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Monitoring biodiversity is a growing and pressing challenge, particularly as climate change threatens species with extinction and leads to widespread shifts in plant distribution and phenology. Tracking changes via ground vegetation surveys is costly and time‐consuming, hence monitoring of complex and heterogenous communities remains an ongoing challenge. Molecular DNA methods are rapidly being developed to provide fast and reproducible results for environmental monitoring, including diet and ecosystem assessments. Here, we used DNA metabarcoding of pollen foraged by European honey bees (Apis mellifera) to investigate their floral resource use in an urban reserve. We collected three different pollen samples from hives: individual bees, raw honey and pollen traps, and identified plants using two metabarcoding markers (ITS2 and trnL). We then compared the results to a ground vegetation survey of surrounding flowering taxa. Pollen DNA metabarcoding detected 74 taxa (48.6% identified to species) across all pollen sources, compared to 44 taxa recorded by the survey (93% identified to species). Within the metabarcoding results, we identified 25% of the genera and 9% of the species found during the survey, with three of the top 10 flowering genera represented. While honey was the most taxon‐rich pollen source (mean = 8.5, SD = 3.5), followed by honey bees (mean = 5.8, SD = 6.1) and pollen traps (mean = 4.2, SD = 1.7), combining the results of six individual bees could detect similar taxa numbers to honey, while 20 bees were required to detect as many taxa as the survey. We demonstrate how DNA metabarcoding of the pollen foraged by honey bees can detect more flowering taxa than traditional survey methods, and how different pollen sources and genetic markers affect the level of detection of plant taxa. The foraging choices of honey bees matched few species detected by the vegetation survey, therefore pollen metabarcoding is recommended as a complementary approach to ground surveys. Rigorous validation and stringent filtering of metabarcoding results were also required to exclude potential false positives. Altogether, this molecular approach can be used to augment vegetation surveys, while tracking the floral resources used by bees.

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“…Various studies on insects confirm that the composition of CHC profiles can reflect climate adaptation on an inter-and intraspecific level (Rajpurohit et al, 2017;Menzel et al, 2017a;Michelutti et al, 2018;Sprenger et al, 2019;Mayr et al, 2021). For example ant species from habitats with high rainfall produce various alkenes, alkadienes and methylbranched alkenes, i.e., substance classes with reduced protection against desiccation stress (Menzel et al, 2017a), while Drosophila populations from warmer regions produce longer CHC chains than population from colder regions (Rajpurohit et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cuticular hydrocarbons of alpine bumble bees (Hymenoptera: Bombus) are species-specific, but show little evidence of elevation-related climate adaptation

Maihoff

Sahler²,

Schoger³

et al. 2023

Front. Ecol. Evol.

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Alpine bumble bees are the most important pollinators in temperate mountain ecosystems. Although they are used to encounter small-scale successions of very different climates in the mountains, many species respond sensitively to climatic changes, reflected in spatial range shifts and declining populations worldwide. Cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) mediate climate adaptation in some insects. However, whether they predict the elevational niche of bumble bees or their responses to climatic changes remains poorly understood. Here, we used three different approaches to study the role of bumble bees’ CHCs in the context of climate adaptation: using a 1,300 m elevational gradient, we first investigated whether the overall composition of CHCs, and two potentially climate-associated chemical traits (proportion of saturated components, mean chain length) on the cuticle of six bumble bee species were linked to the species’ elevational niches. We then analyzed intraspecific variation in CHCs of Bombus pascuorum along the elevational gradient and tested whether these traits respond to temperature. Finally, we used a field translocation experiment to test whether CHCs of Bombus lucorum workers change, when translocated from the foothill of a cool and wet mountain region to (a) higher elevations, and (b) a warm and dry region. Overall, the six species showed distinctive, species-specific CHC profiles. We found inter- and intraspecific variation in the composition of CHCs and in chemical traits along the elevational gradient, but no link to the elevational distribution of species and individuals. According to our expectations, bumble bees translocated to a warm and dry region tended to express longer CHC chains than bumble bees translocated to cool and wet foothills, which could reflect an acclimatization to regional climate. However, chain lengths did not further decrease systematically along the elevational gradient, suggesting that other factors than temperature also shape chain lengths in CHC profiles. We conclude that in alpine bumble bees, CHC profiles and traits respond at best secondarily to the climate conditions tested in this study. While the functional role of species-specific CHC profiles in bumble bees remains elusive, limited plasticity in this trait could restrict species’ ability to adapt to climatic changes.

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Cryptic species and hidden ecological interactions of halictine bees along an elevational gradient

Cited by 18 publications

References 98 publications

Using DNA Metabarcoding to Identify Floral Visitation by Pollinators

Using DNA Metabarcoding to Identify Floral Visitation by Pollinators

Monitoring of honey bee floral resources with pollen DNA metabarcoding as a complementary tool to vegetation surveys

Cuticular hydrocarbons of alpine bumble bees (Hymenoptera: Bombus) are species-specific, but show little evidence of elevation-related climate adaptation

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