Dataset Information

Native bees of high Andes of Central Chile (Hymenoptera: Apoidea): biodiversity, phenology and the description of a new species of Xeromelissa Cockerell (Hymenoptera: Colletidae: Xeromelissinae).

ABSTRACT: High-altitude ecosystems are found in mountain chains and plateaus worldwide. These areas tend to be underrepresented in insect biodiversity assessments because of the challenges related to systematic survey at these elevations, such as extreme climatic and geographic conditions. Nonetheless, high-altitude ecosystems are of paramount importance because they have been seen to be species pumps for other geographic areas, such as adjacent locations, functioning as buffers for population declines. Moreover, these ecosystems and their biodiversity have been proposed to be fast-responding indicators of the impacts caused by global climate change. Bees have been highlighted among the insect groups that have been affected by these problems. This work used bees as a proxy to demonstrate and reinforce the importance of systematic surveys of high-altitude ecosystems. Here, field collections were undertaken and an updated review was conducted for the native bee biodiversity of the high-altitude ecosystem found at the Andes system of central Chile, including the phenological trends of these insects during the flowering season. Of the 58 species that have been described for this location, we were able to confirm the occurrence of 46 of these species as a result of our sampling. In addition, thanks to these recent collections, a new species of Xeromelissa Cockerell is described in the present work. These findings highlight the need for further high-altitude insect surveys of this biome, which include both temporal and spatial complexity in their design, to allow for accurate assessment of bee species diversity and compositional changes in these mountain regions.

SUBMITTER: Henriquez-Piskulich P

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7050550 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Native bees of high Andes of Central Chile (Hymenoptera: Apoidea): biodiversity, phenology and the description of a new species of <i>Xeromelissa</i> Cockerell (Hymenoptera: Colletidae: Xeromelissinae).

Henríquez-Piskulich Patricia P Villagra Cristian A CA Vera Alejandro A

PeerJ 20200228

High-altitude ecosystems are found in mountain chains and plateaus worldwide. These areas tend to be underrepresented in insect biodiversity assessments because of the challenges related to systematic survey at these elevations, such as extreme climatic and geographic conditions. Nonetheless, high-altitude ecosystems are of paramount importance because they have been seen to be species pumps for other geographic areas, such as adjacent locations, functioning as buffers for population declines. M ...[more]

PMID: 32161691

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Project description:BACKGROUND: The past several years have seen a flurry of papers seeking to clarify the utility and limits of DNA barcoding, particularly in areas such as species discovery and paralogy due to nuclear pseudogenes. Heteroplasmy, the coexistence of multiple mitochondrial haplotypes in a single organism, has been cited as a potentially serious problem for DNA barcoding but its effect on identification accuracy has not been tested. In addition, few studies of barcoding have tested a large group of closely-related species with a well-established morphological taxonomy. In this study we examine both of these issues, by densely sampling the Hawaiian Hylaeus bee radiation. RESULTS: Individuals from 21 of the 49 a priori morphologically-defined species exhibited coding sequence heteroplasmy at levels of 1-6% or more. All homoplasmic species were successfully identified by COI using standard methods of analysis, but only 71% of heteroplasmic species. The success rate in identifying heteroplasmic species was increased to 86% by treating polymorphisms as character states rather than ambiguities. Nuclear pseudogenes (numts) were also present in four species, and were distinguishable from heteroplasmic sequences by patterns of nucleotide and amino acid change. CONCLUSIONS: Heteroplasmy significantly decreased the reliability of species identification. In addition, the practical issue of dealing with large numbers of polymorphisms- and resulting increased time and labor required - makes the development of DNA barcode databases considerably more complex than has previously been suggested. The impact of heteroplasmy on the utility of DNA barcoding as a bulk specimen identification tool will depend upon its frequency across populations, which remains unknown. However, DNA barcoding is still likely to remain an important identification tool for those species that are difficult or impossible to identify through morphology, as is the case for the ecologically important solitary bee fauna.

Dataset Information

Native bees of high Andes of Central Chile (Hymenoptera: Apoidea): biodiversity, phenology and the description of a new species of Xeromelissa Cockerell (Hymenoptera: Colletidae: Xeromelissinae).

Publications

Native bees of high Andes of Central Chile (Hymenoptera: Apoidea): biodiversity, phenology and the description of a new species of <i>Xeromelissa</i> Cockerell (Hymenoptera: Colletidae: Xeromelissinae).

Similar Datasets

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