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The potential for phenological mismatch between a perennial herb and its ground-nesting bee pollinator.

ABSTRACT: Climate change may alter the timing of flowering and pollinator activity to differing degrees, resulting in phenological mismatches between mutualistic partners. Assessing the potential for such mismatches requires an understanding of the environmental factors that cue flowering and pollinator activity. Biological context is key to determining specific impacts of climate change, and therefore it is important to study mutualisms with pollinators of different nesting biologies. Our study focused on the phenology of two mutualists native to the coastal dunes of northwestern California: the silky beach pea (Lathyrus littoralis) and its main pollinator, the ground-nesting solitary silver bee (Habropoda miserabilis). We measured the current phenological overlap between the two species and took advantage of local fine-scale spatial variation in the timing of flowering and bee nesting activity to develop predictive models of flowering and flight period timing based on variation in soil temperature and moisture. Temperature best predicted both flowering and bee activity, although soil moisture influenced the timing as well. Comparison of linear regression slopes of phenology against temperature suggests that bee nesting time is more sensitive to differences in seasonal maximum temperatures, and may advance more rapidly than flowering with temperature increases. Although the current phenological overlap between the two species is high, this differential response to temperature could result in a decrease in overlap with climate warming. Our results highlight that nesting biology may be critical in determining impacts of climate change on pollination mutualisms, as ground-nesting bees may respond differently than other bee species. In addition, this work reveals the utility of studying bee species that nest in aggregations for understanding ground-nesting bee phenology.

SUBMITTER: Olliff-Yang RL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6054160 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The potential for phenological mismatch between a perennial herb and its ground-nesting bee pollinator.

Olliff-Yang Rachael L RL Mesler Michael R MR

AoB PLANTS 20180702 4

Climate change may alter the timing of flowering and pollinator activity to differing degrees, resulting in phenological mismatches between mutualistic partners. Assessing the potential for such mismatches requires an understanding of the environmental factors that cue flowering and pollinator activity. Biological context is key to determining specific impacts of climate change, and therefore it is important to study mutualisms with pollinators of different nesting biologies. Our study focused o ...[more]

PMID: 30046417

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Project description:Background and aimsUnderstanding the consequences of polyploidization is a major step towards assessing the importance of this mode of speciation. Most previous studies comparing different cytotypes, however, did so only within a single environment and considered only one group of traits. To take a step further, we need to explore multiple environments and a wide range of traits. The aim of this study was to assess response of diploid and autotetraploid individuals of Knautia arvensis (Dipsacaceae) to two stress conditions, shade or drought.MethodsWe studied eleven photosynthetic, morphological and fitness parameters of the plants over three years in a common garden under ambient conditions and two types of stress.Key resultsThe results indicate strong differences in performance and physiology between cytotypes in ambient conditions. Interestingly, higher fitness in diploids contrasted with more efficient photosynthesis in tetraploids in ambient conditions. However, stress, especially drought, strongly reduced fitness and disrupted function of the photosystems in both cytotypes reducing the between cytotype differences. The results indicate that drought stress reduced function of the photosynthetic processes in both cytotypes but particularly in tetraploids, while fitness reduction was stronger in diploids.ConclusionsThe photosynthesis related traits show higher plasticity in polyploids as theoretically expected, while the fitness related traits show higher plasticity in diploids especially in response to drought. This suggests that between cytotype comparisons need to consider multiple traits and multiple environments to understand the breath of possible responses of different cytotypes to stress. They also show that integrating results based on different traits is not straightforward and call for better mechanistic understanding of the relationships between species photosynthetic activity and fitness. Still, considering multiple environments and multiple species traits is crucial for understanding the drivers of niche differentiation between cytotypes in future studies.

Project description:Bees are the primary pollinators of flowering plants in almost all ecosystems. Worldwide declines in bee populations have raised awareness about the importance of their ecological role in maintaining ecosystem functioning. The naturally strong philopatric behavior that some bee species show can be detrimental to population viability through increased probability of inbreeding. Furthermore, bee populations found in human-altered landscapes, such as urban areas, can experience lower levels of gene flow and effective population sizes, increasing potential for inbreeding depression in wild bee populations. In this study, we investigated the fine-scale population structure of the solitary bee Colletes inaequalis in an urbanized landscape. First, we developed a predictive spatial model to detect suitable nesting habitat for this ground nesting bee and to inform our field search for nests. We genotyped 18 microsatellites in 548 female individuals collected from nest aggregations throughout the study area. Genetic relatedness estimates revealed that genetic similarity among individuals was slightly greater within nest aggregations than among randomly chosen individuals. However, genetic structure among nest aggregations was low (Nei's GST = 0.011). Reconstruction of parental genotypes revealed greater genetic relatedness among females than among males within nest aggregations, suggesting male-mediated dispersal as a potentially important mechanism of population connectivity and inbreeding avoidance. Size of nesting patch was positively correlated with effective population size, but not with other estimators of genetic diversity. We detected a positive trend between geographic distance and genetic differentiation between nest aggregations. Our landscape genetic models suggest that increased urbanization is likely associated with higher levels of inbreeding. Overall, these findings emphasize the importance of density and distribution of suitable nesting patches for enhancing bee population abundance and connectivity in human dominated habitats and highlights the critical contribution of landscape genetic studies for enhanced conservation and management of native pollinators.

Project description:BackgroundInterspecific interactions within ecological networks can influence animal fitness and behaviour, including nest-site selection of birds and ants. Previous studies revealed that nesting birds and ants may benefit from cohabitation, with interspecific attraction through their nest-site choice, but mutual interactions have not yet been tested. We explored a previously undescribed ecological link between ground-nesting birds and ants raising their own broods (larvae and pupae) within the birds' nests in a temperate primeval forest of lowland Europe. We tested whether the occurrence of ant broods within bird nests resulted from a mutual or one-sided interspecific attraction that operated through nest-site choice and was modified by weather conditions.ResultsWe found a non-random occupation of bird nests by ants raising their own broods within them, which indicated interspecific attraction driven solely by the ants. The birds' preference to nest near tussocks of vegetation showed little overlap with the most frequent placement of ant colonies among fallen deciduous tree-leaves, dead wood and moss. Additionally, birds did not appear to select forest localities with high densities of ant colonies. The occurrence of ant broods within bird nests was also unrelated to bird nest placement near to specific habitat features. The attractiveness of bird nests to ants appeared to increase with the thermal activity of the birds warming their nests, and also during cool and wet weather when the occurrence of ant broods within bird nests was most frequent. Ants often remained in the nests after the birds had vacated them, with only a slight reduction in the probability of ant brood occurrence over time.ConclusionsThe natural patterns of bird nest colonisation by ants support the hypothesis of ants' attraction to warm nests of birds to raise their broods under advantageous thermal conditions. Similar relationships may occur between other warm-blooded, nest-building vertebrates and nest-dwelling invertebrates, which depend on ambient temperatures. The findings advance our understanding of these poorly recognised interspecific interactions, and can inform future studies of ecological networks.

Dataset Information

The potential for phenological mismatch between a perennial herb and its ground-nesting bee pollinator.

Publications

The potential for phenological mismatch between a perennial herb and its ground-nesting bee pollinator.

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