Dataset Information

Linking pollen foraging of megachilid bees to their nest bacterial microbiota.

ABSTRACT: Solitary bees build their nests by modifying the interior of natural cavities, and they provision them with food by importing collected pollen. As a result, the microbiota of the solitary bee nests may be highly dependent on introduced materials. In order to investigate how the collected pollen is associated with the nest microbiota, we used metabarcoding of the ITS2 rDNA and the 16S rDNA to simultaneously characterize the pollen composition and the bacterial communities of 100 solitary bee nest chambers belonging to seven megachilid species. We found a weak correlation between bacterial and pollen alpha diversity and significant associations between the composition of pollen and that of the nest microbiota, contributing to the understanding of the link between foraging and bacteria acquisition for solitary bees. Since solitary bees cannot establish bacterial transmission routes through eusociality, this link could be essential for obtaining bacterial symbionts for this group of valuable pollinators. Open Research Badges:This article has earned an Open Data Badge for making publicly available the digitally-shareable data necessary to reproduce the reported results. The data is available at https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/view/PRJEB27223, https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/view/PRJEB31610, and https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qk36k8q.

SUBMITTER: Voulgari-Kokota A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6787775 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Linking pollen foraging of megachilid bees to their nest bacterial microbiota.

Voulgari-Kokota Anna A Ankenbrand Markus J MJ Grimmer Gudrun G Steffan-Dewenter Ingolf I Keller Alexander A

Ecology and evolution 20190902 18

Solitary bees build their nests by modifying the interior of natural cavities, and they provision them with food by importing collected pollen. As a result, the microbiota of the solitary bee nests may be highly dependent on introduced materials. In order to investigate how the collected pollen is associated with the nest microbiota, we used metabarcoding of the ITS2 rDNA and the 16S rDNA to simultaneously characterize the pollen composition and the bacterial communities of 100 solitary bee nest ...[more]

PMID: 31624582

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Project description:Habitat fragmentation can have severe effects on plant pollinator interactions, for example changing the foraging behaviour of pollinators. To date, the impact of plant population size on pollen collection by pollinators has not yet been investigated. From 2008 to 2010, we monitored nine bumble bee species (Bombus campestris, Bombus hortorum s.l., Bombus hypnorum, Bombus lapidarius, Bombus pascuorum, Bombus pratorum, Bombus soroensis, Bombus terrestris s.l., Bombus vestalis s.l.) on Vaccinium uliginosum (Ericaceae) in up to nine populations in Belgium ranging in size from 80 m(2) to over 3.1 ha. Bumble bee abundance declined with decreasing plant population size, and especially the proportion of individuals of large bumble bee species diminished in smaller populations. The most remarkable and novel observation was that bumble bees seemed to switch foraging behaviour according to population size: while they collected both pollen and nectar in large populations, they largely neglected pollen collection in small populations. This pattern was due to large bumble bee species, which seem thus to be more likely to suffer from pollen shortages in smaller habitat fragments. Comparing pollen loads of bumble bees we found that fidelity to V. uliginosum pollen did not depend on plant population size but rather on the extent shrub cover and/or openness of the site. Bumble bees collected pollen only from three plant species (V.uliginosum, Sorbus aucuparia and Cytisus scoparius). We also did not discover any pollination limitation of V. uliginosum in small populations. We conclude that habitat fragmentation might not immediately threaten the pollination of V. uliginosum, nevertheless, it provides important nectar and pollen resources for bumble bees and declining populations of this plant could have negative effects for its pollinators. The finding that large bumble bee species abandon pollen collection when plant populations become small is of interest when considering plant and bumble bee conservation.

Dataset Information

Linking pollen foraging of megachilid bees to their nest bacterial microbiota.

Publications

Linking pollen foraging of megachilid bees to their nest bacterial microbiota.

Similar Datasets

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