Inferring the foraging ranges of social bees from sibling genotypes sampled across discrete locations

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 645-658 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathaniel S. Pope ◽  
Shalene Jha
Keyword(s):  
Social Bees ◽  
Foraging Ranges

Parasite defense mechanisms in bees: behavior, immunity, antimicrobials, and symbionts

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison E. Fowler ◽  
Rebecca E. Irwin ◽  
Lynn S. Adler
Keyword(s):  
Defense Mechanisms ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Immune Priming ◽  
Social Bees ◽  
Bee Health ◽  
Landscape Scales ◽  
And Function ◽  
Solitary Species

Parasites are linked to the decline of some bee populations; thus, understanding defense mechanisms has important implications for bee health. Recent advances have improved our understanding of factors mediating bee health ranging from molecular to landscape scales, but often as disparate literatures. Here, we bring together these fields and summarize our current understanding of bee defense mechanisms including immunity, immunization, and transgenerational immune priming in social and solitary species. Additionally, the characterization of microbial diversity and function in some bee taxa has shed light on the importance of microbes for bee health, but we lack information that links microbial communities to parasite infection in most bee species. Studies are beginning to identify how bee defense mechanisms are affected by stressors such as poor-quality diets and pesticides, but further research on this topic is needed. We discuss how integrating research on host traits, microbial partners, and nutrition, as well as improving our knowledge base on wild and semi-social bees, will help inform future research, conservation efforts, and management.

scholarly journals Landscape structure affects the sunflower visiting frequency of insect pollinators

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Károly Lajos ◽  
Ferenc Samu ◽  
Áron Domonkos Bihaly ◽  
Dávid Fülöp ◽  
Miklós Sárospataki
Keyword(s):  
Landscape Structure ◽  
Honey Bees ◽  
Agricultural Landscape ◽  
Edge Density ◽  
Wild Bees ◽  
Natural Habitats ◽  
Mass Flowering ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
Pollinator Community ◽  
Foraging Ranges

AbstractMass-flowering crop monocultures, like sunflower, cannot harbour a permanent pollinator community. Their pollination is best secured if both managed honey bees and wild pollinators are present in the agricultural landscape. Semi-natural habitats are known to be the main foraging and nesting areas of wild pollinators, thus benefiting their populations, whereas crops flowering simultaneously may competitively dilute pollinator densities. In our study we asked how landscape structure affects major pollinator groups’ visiting frequency on 36 focal sunflower fields, hypothesising that herbaceous semi-natural (hSNH) and sunflower patches in the landscape neighbourhood will have a scale-dependent effect. We found that an increasing area and/or dispersion of hSNH areas enhanced the visitation of all pollinator groups. These positive effects were scale-dependent and corresponded well with the foraging ranges of the observed bee pollinators. In contrast, an increasing edge density of neighbouring sunflower fields resulted in considerably lower visiting frequencies of wild bees. Our results clearly indicate that the pollination of sunflower is dependent on the composition and configuration of the agricultural landscape. We conclude that an optimization of the pollination can be achieved if sufficient amount of hSNH areas with good dispersion are provided and mass flowering crops do not over-dominate the agricultural landscape.

scholarly journals Glycerol 3-Phosphate Dehydrogenases in Social Bees

1970 ◽  
Vol 245 (24) ◽  
pp. 6525-6532
Author(s):  
Steven C. Fink ◽  
Charles W. Carlson ◽  
S. Gurusiddaiah ◽  
Ronald W. Brosemer
Keyword(s):  
Social Bees

scholarly journals A Distinctive and Host-Restricted Gut Microbiota in Populations of a Cactophilic Drosophila Species

2017 ◽  
Vol 83 (23) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent G. Martinson ◽  
Javier Carpinteyro-Ponce ◽  
Nancy A. Moran ◽  
Therese A. Markow
Keyword(s):  
Sonoran Desert ◽  
Natural Habitat ◽  
Natural Food ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Columnar Cacti ◽  
Social Bees ◽  
Insect Gut ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Natural Settings ◽  
Bacterial Groups

ABSTRACT Almost all animals possess gut microbial communities, but the nature of these communities varies immensely. For example, in social bees and mammals, the composition is relatively constant within species and is dominated by specialist bacteria that do not live elsewhere; in laboratory studies and field surveys of Drosophila melanogaster, however, gut communities consist of bacteria that are ingested with food and that vary widely among individuals and localities. We addressed whether an ecological specialist in its natural habitat has a microbiota dominated by gut specialists or by environmental bacteria. Drosophila nigrospiracula is a species that is endemic to the Sonoran Desert and is restricted to decaying tissues of two giant columnar cacti, Pachycereus pringlei (cardón cactus) and Carnegiea gigantea (saguaro cactus). We found that the D. nigrospiracula microbiota differs strikingly from that of the cactus tissue on which the flies feed. The most abundant bacteria in the flies are rare or completely absent in the cactus tissue and are consistently abundant in flies from different cacti and localities. Several of these fly-associated bacterial groups, such as the bacterial order Orbales and the genera Serpens and Dysgonomonas, have been identified in prior surveys of insects from the orders Hymenoptera, Coleoptera, Lepidoptera, and Diptera, including several Drosophila species. Although the functions of these bacterial groups are mostly unexplored, Orbales species studied in bees are known to break down plant polysaccharides and use the resulting sugars. Thus, these bacterial groups appear to be specialized to the insect gut environment, where they may colonize through direct host-to-host transmission in natural settings. IMPORTANCE Flies in the genus Drosophila have become laboratory models for microbiota research, yet the bacteria commonly used in these experiments are rarely found in wild-caught flies and instead represent bacteria also present in the food. This study shows that an ecologically specialized Drosophila species possesses a distinctive microbiome, composed of bacterial types absent from the flies' natural food but widespread in other wild-caught insects. This study highlights the importance of fieldwork-informed microbiota research.

Predation on marine-phase Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) by gannets (Morus bassanus) in the Northwest Atlantic

2002 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 602-612 ◽  
Author(s):  
W A Montevecchi ◽  
D K Cairns ◽  
R A Myers
Keyword(s):  
Atlantic Salmon ◽  
Salmo Salar ◽  
Labrador Sea ◽  
Atlantic Salmon Salmo Salar ◽  
Limited Sampling ◽  
Large Colony ◽  
Pelagic Food Webs ◽  
Migratory Routes ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
Foraging Ranges

Predation on Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) has been recorded in rivers and estuaries, but there is little documentation of predation at sea. Prey landed by gannets (Morus bassanus) over 24 years in a large colony off northeast Newfoundland included small proportions of post-smolt Atlantic salmon. Before 1990, when shifts in oceanographic conditions and pelagic food webs occurred in the Labrador Sea, post-smolts, on average, made up 0.29% of estimated intake by gannets during August 1977–1989. In contrast, during the 1990s, this estimate increased to 2.53%, peaking at 6.37% in 1993. Model estimates with wide error margins projected that gannets consumed a mean of 1.6 t and 19.2 t of post-smolts during August 1977–1989 and 1990–2000, respectively, making up 0.22% and 2.70% of estimated North American post-smolt biomass during these periods. The migratory routes of post-smolt Atlantic salmon pass through the foraging ranges of gannet colonies, but limited sampling at colonies other than Funk has not revealed salmon in gannet diets. Sampling seabird diets is an economic, biological means of investigating the ecology and natural mortality of Atlantic salmon. Spatial and temporal expansion of this sampling would enhance its oceanographic context and reduce uncertainty associated with estimates of predation by seabirds.

Seabird foraging ranges as a preliminary tool for identifying candidate Marine Protected Areas

2012 ◽  
Vol 156 ◽  
pp. 53-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris B. Thaxter ◽  
Ben Lascelles ◽  
Kate Sugar ◽  
Aonghais S.C.P. Cook ◽  
Staffan Roos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Protected Areas ◽  
Marine Protected Areas ◽  
Foraging Ranges

scholarly journals Social bees are fitter in more biodiverse environments

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin F. Kaluza ◽  
Helen M. Wallace ◽  
Tim A. Heard ◽  
Vanessa Minden ◽  
Alexandra Klein ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Bees

scholarly journals A comparative analysis of colour preferences in temperate and tropical social bees

2018 ◽  
Vol 105 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
G. S. Balamurali ◽  
Elizabeth Nicholls ◽  
Hema Somanathan ◽  
Natalie Hempel de Ibarra
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Social Bees ◽  
Colour Preferences

scholarly journals Information flow and group decision making in social bees

Apidologie ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-99
Author(s):  
Stan Schneider ◽  
Marla Spivak
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Information Flow ◽  
Group Decision Making ◽  
Group Decision ◽  
Social Bees
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