Variation in the pollinator community visiting invasive Cytisus scoparius L. Link (Fabaceae) along an elevation gradient

Bode, Robert F.; Linhart, Roger Danner; Dufresne, Catherine

doi:10.1007/s11829-020-09755-8

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Our crop visitation data shows low similarity in the community of bees that visit crop flowers between crop species and also between some elevations, indicating the importance of elevation in determining the pollinator assemblages occurring at each crop species, as well as crop pollination effectiveness 27 . When bee species in the study area shift their ranges upslope, as climate change research predicts 28 , pollination services for economically important crop species may become unreliable, owing to spatial mismatches 29 . We did not evaluate the effectiveness of each bee species for fruit set or fruit quality in our study, however, our results suggest that, as a result of warming temperatures, novel bee communities are likely to be formed in tropical montane landscapes in the future, with an unknown impact to pollination services 30 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tropical bee species abundance differs within a narrow elevational gradient

Conrad

Peters

Rehan

2021

Sci Rep

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Insect pollination is among the most essential ecosystem services for humanity. Globally, bees are the most effective pollinators, and tropical bees are also important for maintaining tropical biodiversity. Despite their invaluable pollination service, basic distributional patterns of tropical bees along elevation gradients are globally scarce. Here, we surveyed bees at 100 m elevation intervals from 800 to 1100 m elevation in Costa Rica to test if bee abundance, community composition and crop visitor assemblages differed by elevation. We found that 18 of 24 bee species spanning three tribes that represented the most abundantly collected bee species showed abundance differences by elevation, even within this narrow elevational gradient. Bee assemblages at the two crop species tested, avocado and squash, showed community dissimilarity between high and low elevations, and elevation was a significant factor in explaining bee community composition along the gradient. Stingless bees (Tribe Meliponini) were important visitors to both crop species, but there was a more diverse assemblage of bees visiting avocado compared to squash. Our findings suggest that successful conservation of tropical montane bee communities and pollination services will require knowledge of which elevations support the highest numbers of each species, rather than species full altitudinal ranges.

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