Urban habitat fragmentation and floral resources shape the occurrence of gut parasites in two bumblebee species

Tommasi, Nicola; Colombo, Beatrice; Pioltelli, Emiliano; Biella, Paolo; Casiraghi, Maurizio; Galimberti, Andrea

doi:10.1002/ece3.10299

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 75 publications

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“…Temperature is believed to have species-specific effects on both hosts and pathogens, thus influencing ecological interactions (Wojda, 2017;Meeus et al, 2018). Despite several researchers attempting to explore the impact of urbanization on bee epidemiology (Cohen et al, 2022;Ivers et al, 2022;Tommasi et al, 2023), to our knowledge, none of them have evaluated the UHI effect on host-pathogen dynamics in bees.…”

Section: Pathogensmentioning

confidence: 99%

Warming up through buildings and roads: what we know and should know about the urban heat island effect on bees

Polidori,

Ferrari,

Ronchetti

et al. 2023

Front. Bee Sci.

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Urbanization leads to cities having higher temperatures than surrounding non-urban areas [this is known as the urban heat island (UHI) effect]. Very little is known about the impacts of the UHI effect on bees, despite the importance of temperature on many aspects of bees’ life suggesting that these may be not negligible. In this study, we aimed to highlight how the UHI effect could impact relevant functional traits of bees in cities, proposing several ad hoc hypotheses for traits that have thus far been investigated only in few studies or not at all, based on what we know from non-urban studies. The UHI effect was shown to influence bee body size, and generally tended to reduce the body size of bees in cities. Urban temperature may also affect bees’ wing morphology, and thus their overall flight morphology parameters. Individuals may be more brightly colored in cities. Bee ommatidial size and the number of antennal thermoreceptors they have may be smaller and fewer, respectively, in cities than in non-urban areas. As expected, because urban bees face a higher risk of desiccation, higher proportions of alkanes and longer main-carbon chain lengths are expected in their cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) profiles. Stress biomarkers can also occur at greater concentrations in bees in cities and specific bacteria in the bee gut may occur at lower abundances. Warm urban temperatures may impact the life cycle of pathogens by reducing their proliferation. Aggression levels may be increased, and eusocial species may present more worker phases per year due to the UHI effect. All of these proposed impacts could be likely more visible in solitary and primitively eusocial bee species, which are those suspected to have a more limited dispersal ability. Comparative studies would help in the proper testing of these hypotheses.

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Section: Pathogensmentioning

confidence: 99%

Warming up through buildings and roads: what we know and should know about the urban heat island effect on bees

Polidori,

Ferrari,

Ronchetti

et al. 2023

Front. Bee Sci.

Self Cite

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Urbanization Shifts Immunometabolism in a Common Bumblebee

Cuvillier‐Hot,

Fisogni,

Doublet

et al. 2024

Ecology and Evolution

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The growing urbanization process is accompanied by the emergence of new habitats for wildlife, and cities are sometimes seen as refuges for pollinators such as wild bees compared to intensively cultivated rural habitats. However, the contrasting living conditions that combine high fragmentation, exposure to pollutants, and heat island effects, with low pesticide use and potentially high availability of resources, make it difficult to predict the overall effect of urban living on the health of wild bees. Moreover, if the responses of wild bee populations in terms of species richness and diversity have been the focus of many recent studies, individual responses to urbanization have been more rarely investigated. More specifically, data on the impacts on individual bee physiology and health are lacking. To help fill this gap, we collected red‐tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) workers along a gradient of urbanization defined by the level of soil imperviousness, and estimated environmental (air quality) and ecological (pathogens' prevalence and loads; local competition) pressures they locally experienced. In parallel, we quantified the expression of selected immune marker genes. We measured how the immune system of bumblebees responds to urbanization gradient and which local parameters best explain the observed changes in immune gene expression. We evidenced three immune markers, tightly linked with cellular metabolism, whose expressions increase with the level of urbanization, independently of individual infection and pollution exposure. We suggest that induction of their expression reveals a shift in wild bee immunometabolism, supposedly in response to the stressful conditions experienced in areas with high built‐up cover. The induction of these genes is likely at the root of any immune activation; they could thus be used as markers to estimate the levels of urban stress locally experienced by pollinators.

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On the occurrence of the neogregarine Apicystis bombi (Apicomplexa) in South America: an unassembled puzzle

Plischuk,

Lange

2024

Biol Invasions

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Urban habitat fragmentation and floral resources shape the occurrence of gut parasites in two bumblebee species

Cited by 3 publications

References 75 publications

Warming up through buildings and roads: what we know and should know about the urban heat island effect on bees

Warming up through buildings and roads: what we know and should know about the urban heat island effect on bees

Urbanization Shifts Immunometabolism in a Common Bumblebee

On the occurrence of the neogregarine Apicystis bombi (Apicomplexa) in South America: an unassembled puzzle

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