Biology subjects

Bartomeus, I.

Publications and source records attributed to Bartomeus, I..

28 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

bioRxiv2020

Recipient and donor characteristics govern the hierarchical structure of heterospecific pollen competition networks

O_LIPollinator sharing can have negative consequences for plant fitness with the arrival of foreign pollen, yet responses are often variable among species. Plant traits and relatedness of donor and recipient species have been suggested to drive the variations in plant fitness, but how they shape the structure of pollen competition networks has been overlooked at the community level. C_LIO_LITo understand the importance of traits and relatedness we conducted a controlled glasshouse experiment with an artificial co-flowering community. We performed 900 reciprocal crosses by experimentally transferring pollen among 10 species belonging to three different plant families. C_LIO_LIWe found a significant reduction in seed set for 67% of the crosses, driven largely by recipient traits and the interaction between recipient-donor traits under specific circumstances of trait-matching. These traits and their asymmetries among species led to a hierarchical (or transitive) structure of pollen competition with clear winners and losers depending on specific combination of traits. C_LIO_LIA greater understanding of the importance of trait matching and asymmetries among donor and recipient plant species will facilitate knowledge of the mechanisms underlying foreign pollen impacts upon plant reproductive fitness. This will require a shift from pairwise to community level interactions. C_LI

ecology↗

bioRxiv2019

Innovation in solitary bees is driven by exploration, shyness and activity levels

Behavioural innovation is widely considered an important mechanism by which animals respond to novel environmental challenges, including those induced by human activities. Despite its functional and ecological relevance, much of our current understanding of the innovation process comes from studies in vertebrates. Understanding innovation processes in insects has lagged behind partly because they are not perceived to have the cognitive machinery required to innovate. This perception is however challenged by recent evidence demonstrating sophisticated cognitive capabilities in insects despite their small brains. Here, we study the innovation capacity of a solitary bee (Osmia cornuta) in the laboratory by exposing naive individuals to an obstacle removal task. We also studied the underlying cognitive and non-cognitive mechanisms through a battery of experimental tests designed to measure learning, exploration, shyness and activity levels. We found that solitary bees can innovate, with 11 of 29 individuals (38%) being able to solve a new task consisting in lifting a lid to reach a reward. The propensity to innovate was uncorrelated with learning capacities, but increased with exploration, boldness and activity. These results provide solid evidence that non-social insects can innovate, and highlight the importance of interpreting innovation in the light of non-cognitive processes.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2019

Safeguarding the genetic integrity of native pollinators requires stronger regulations on commercial lines

Every year more than one million commercial bumblebee colonies are deployed in greenhouses worldwide for its pollination services to several commercially important crops such as tomato and different species of berries. While commercial pollinators have been an enormous benefit for the production of essential food crops and for achieving higher yields and better fruit quality at a low cost, their use is emerging also as an important threat to wild pollinators. Commercial pollinators have been linked to pathogen spillover to wild species, and its introduction outside its native area have had devastating effects on native pollinator populations. However, a more pervasive, but underappreciated threat is their potential impact on the genetic integrity of native pollinators. Here, we show clear evidence of generalized hybridization between native and introduced commercial bumblebee lineages in southern Spain. The signal of genetic introgression is widespread and already expands up to 60 km from main commercial bumblebee release areas. As pollination services demand is predicted to increase in the coming years, only a more restrictive regulation of commercial lines could mitigate their negative impacts on the genetic integrity of native pollinators and prevent the disruption of local adaptations.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2019

Interaction network structure maximizes community-level plant reproduction success via niche complementarity

AO_SCPLOWBSTRACTC_SCPLOWOur understanding of how the structure of species interactions shapes natural communities has increased, particularly regarding plant-pollinator interactions. However, research linking pollinator diversity to reproductive success has focused on pairwise plant-pollinator interactions, largely overlooking community-level dynamics. Here, we present one of the first empirical studies linking pollinator visitation to plant reproduction from a community-wide perspective. We use a well-replicated dataset encompassing 16 plant-pollinator networks and data on reproductive success for 19 plant species from Mediterranean shrub ecosystems. We find that statistical models including simple visitation metrics are sufficient to explain the variability observed. However, a mechanistic understanding of how pollinator diversity affects reproductive success requires additional information on network structure. Specifically, we find positive effects of increasing complementarity in the plant species visited by different pollinators on plant reproductive success. Hence, maintaining communities with a diversity of species but also of functions is paramount to preserving plant diversity.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2019

A global synthesis reveals biodiversity-mediated benefits for crop production

Human land use threatens global biodiversity and compromises multiple ecosystem functions critical to food production. Whether crop yield-related ecosystem services can be maintained by few abundant species or rely on high richness remains unclear. Using a global database from 89 crop systems, we partition the relative importance of abundance and species richness for pollination, biological pest control and final yields in the context of on-going land-use change. Pollinator and enemy richness directly supported ecosystem services independent of abundance. Up to 50% of the negative effects of landscape simplification on ecosystem services was due to richness losses of service-providing organisms, with negative consequences for crop yields. Maintaining the biodiversity of ecosystem service providers is therefore vital to sustain the flow of key agroecosystem benefits to society.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2018

Pollinator size and its consequences: Predictive allometry for pollinating insects

O_LIBody size is an integral functional trait that underlies pollination-related ecological processes, yet it is often impractical to measure directly. Allometric scaling laws have been used to overcome this problem. However, most existing models rely upon small sample sizes, geographically restricted sampling and have limited applicability for non-bee taxa. Predictive allometric models that consider biogeography, phylogenetic relatedness and intraspecific variation are urgently required to ensure greater accuracy.\nC_LIO_LIHere, we measured body size, as dry weight, and intertegular distance (ITD) of 391 bee species (4035 specimens) and 103 hoverfly species (399 specimens) across four biogeographic regions: Australia, Europe, North America and South America. We updated existing models within a Bayesian mixed-model framework to test the power of ITD to predict interspecific variation in pollinator dry weight in interaction with different co-variates: phylogeny or taxonomy, sexual dimorphism and biogeographic region. In addition, we used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to assess intraspecific dry weight - ITD relationships for 10 bee and five hoverfly species.\nC_LIO_LIIncluding co-variates led to more robust interspecific body size predictions for both bees (Bayesian R2: 0.946; {Delta}R2 0.047) and hoverflies (Bayesian R2: 0.821; {Delta}R2 0.058) relative to models with ITD alone. In contrast, at the intraspecific level, our results demonstrate that ITD is an inconsistent predictor of body size for bees (R2: 0.02 - 0.66) and hoverflies (R2: -0.11 - 0.44).\nC_LIO_LITherefore, predictive allometry is more suitable for interspecific comparative analyses than assessing intraspecific variation. Collectively, these models form the basis of the dynamic R package, pollimetry, which provides a comprehensive resource for allometric research concerning insect pollinators worldwide.\nC_LI

ecology↗

bioRxiv2018

Species-habitat networks: Bridging applied ecology and network theory

Land-use change is massively reshaping terrestrial ecosystems worldwide, and is recognized as a key driver of biodiversity loss with negative consequences on ecosystem functioning. Understanding how species use resources across landscapes is essential for the design of effective management strategies. Despite recent advances in theoretical ecology, there is still a gap between theory and applied ecological science and we lack the tools to manage entire landscapes to maximize biodiversity conservation and ecosystem service delivery. Here, we propose a new approach that uses existing bipartite networks to create species-habitat networks. Networks enable powerful visualizations via a common language that defines most processes in terms of nodes and links. This approach explicitly links multiple species and habitat resources, provides tools to estimate the importance of particular species in a given landscape, and quantifies emerging properties of entire habitat networks. Most existing metrics used to study properties of bipartite ecological networks can easily be adapted to investigate species-habitat relationships. One key advantage of this approach is that the scale of the derived ecological information will match the scale of management interventions. The flexibility of the proposed approach is that it can be easily applied across a range of ecological fields such as species conservation, habitat restoration, ecosystem services management, or invasion ecology. Network emerging properties could also be used to test the effects of large scale drivers of global change upon ecosystem structure and stability.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2018

Historic collections as a tool for assessing the global pollinator crisis

There is increasing concern about the decline of pollinators worldwide. However, despite reports that pollinator declines are widespread, data are scarce and often geographically and taxonomically biased. These biases limit robust inference about any potential pollinator crisis. Non-structured and opportunistic historical specimen collection data provide the only source of historical information which can serve as a baseline for identifying pollinator declines. Specimens historically collected and preserved in museums not only provide information on where and when species were collected, but also contain other ecological information such as species interactions and morphological traits. Here, we provide a synthesis of how researchers have used historical data to identify long-term changes in biodiversity, species abundances, morphology and pollination services. Despite recent advances, we show that information on the status and trends of most pollinators is absent, but we highlight opportunities and limitations to progress the assessment of pollinator declines globally. Finally, we demonstrate different approaches to analysing museum collection data using two contrasting case studies from distinct geographical regions (New Zealand and Spain) for which long-term pollinator declines have never been assessed. There is immense potential for museum specimens to play a central role in assessing the extent of the global pollination crisis.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2018

Bees use anthropogenic habitats despite strong natural habitat preferences

Habitat loss and alteration is widely considered one of the main drivers of the current loss of pollinator diversity. Unfortunately, we still lack a comprehensive analysis of habitat importance, use and preference for major groups of pollinators. Here, we address this gap analysing a large dataset of 15,762 bee specimens (more than 400 species) across northeast USA. We found that natural habitats sustain the highest bee diversity, with many species strongly depending on such habitats. By characterizing habitat use and preference for the 45 most abundant species, we also show that many bee species can use human-altered habitats despite exhibiting strong and clear preferences for forested habitats. However, only a few species appear to do well when the habitat has been drastically modified. We conclude that although altered environments may harbor a substantial number of species, preserving natural areas is still essential to guarantee the conservation of bee biodiversity.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2017

Opposing effects of floral visitors and soil conditions on the determinants of competitive outcomes maintain species diversity in heterogeneous landscapes

Theory argues that both soil conditions and aboveground trophic interactions are equally important for determining plant species diversity. However, it remains unexplored how they modify the niche differences that stabilise species coexistence and the average fitness differences driving competitive dominance. We conducted a field study in Mediterranean annual grasslands to parameterise population models of six competing plant species. Spatially explicit floral visitor assemblages and soil salinity variation were characterized for each species. Both floral visitors and soil salinity modified species population dynamics via direct changes in seed production and indirect changes in competitive responses. Although the magnitude and sign of these changes were species specific, floral visitors promoted coexistence at neighbourhood scales while soil salinity did so over larger scales by changing the superior competitor's identity. Our results show how below and aboveground interactions maintain diversity in heterogeneous landscapes through their opposing effects on the determinants of competitive outcomes.

ecology↗