Biology subjects

Olsson, S. B.

Publications and source records attributed to Olsson, S. B..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Consistency in floral volatiles impacts plant-pollinator interactions in the face of environmental change in the Eastern Himalayas

Floral scents are an important mediator of many plant-pollinator interactions. However, environmental and ecological change could affect the synthesis and emission of volatile chemicals that constitute floral scents, potentially influencing pollinator perception of scents. We investigated the effects of elevation and warming on the floral scents of multiple co-occurring alpine meadow plant species along an elevational gradient in the Eastern Himalayas (3000 - 4000 masl). We also investigated pollinator responses in the same locations using 3-D printed floral models that replicated the differing volatile constituents. Finally, we assessed how pollinator preferences changed with variations in elevation, flowering season and location. We found that elevation and in-situ warming using Open Top Chambers (OTC) led to significant intraspecific variation in the composition of floral scents, both in terms of quality and quantity of volatiles released. Nevertheless, conspecific floral scents across elevations were more similar to each other than to other species. Cafeteria assays using artificial floral models revealed that pollinator preferences were driven by a small number of volatiles (p-cymene, 2-pentylfuran and -pinene), but these preferences were abolished in a novel plant-pollinator community where the same floral volatiles were not detected. Our results suggest that the local odourscape established by the floral community present plays a key role in plant-pollinator interactions. This emphasizes the need to incorporate ecological impacts such as changes in community into climate change analyses to understand the long-term impacts of human activity on co-evolutionary relationships like pollination. Significance StatementFloral scents are important for most plant-pollinator interactions, and can be affected by environmental factors like elevation and temperature. Our study shows that elevation and simulated in situ warming change the composition of floral scents, yet scents from the same species were more similar to each other across elevations and temperatures than to other species. Further, pollinator preferences to these scents replicated in artificial models persisted in spite of variation in temperature and elevation, but not in a novel plant-pollinator community containing floral species not releasing those volatiles. This emphasizes the need to incorporate factors such as floral community composition into our understanding of the long-term impacts of climate change and human activity on co-evolutionary relationships like pollination.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2024

Surviving in the mountains: Temperature and elevation have contrasting physiological effects on the hoverfly Eristalis tenax in the Himalayas

Insect populations are experiencing a global decline due to a variety of human-linked environmental changes. Among these changes, how insects physiology might be affected by predicted upslope migration due to climate change is unknown. Being ectotherms, insect physiology is impacted by abiotic factors like ambient temperature that change with elevation. Here, we performed in situ experiments to assess the sensory and cardiac physiology of an important generalist pollinating hoverfly Eristalis tenax (Diptera: Syrphidae), across different elevations in the eco-sensitive and biodiverse Himalayan mountains. We built a portable physiology setup and measured hoverfly antennal responses towards common floral volatiles at 3600 masl and 4200 masl. We also recorded their heart rate at 3000 masl, 3500 masl and 4000 masl. We report the first in situ physiology experiments performed in the high-altitude Himalayas. Our results show a contrasting impact of elevation and temperature on the sensory and cardiac physiology of hoverflies, with antennal sensitivity decreasing with increasing elevation, while average heart rate increased with temperature, independent of elevation. With upslope migration and climate warming, consequent sensory mismatches and cardiac stress could have deleterious effects on the health of both hoverflies and the vulnerable Himalayan ecosystem.

zoology↗

bioRxiv2024

Innate floral object identification in the generalist solitary hoverfly pollinator Eristalinus aeneus

All animals must locate and identify food for their survival. Most insects are solitary. Newly emerged solitary insects must therefore employ innate identification of food cues to locate relevant nutritive objects from a distance. Innate preferences for food cues should be both specific enough to allow discrimination between food and non-food objects and general enough to allow for the variety of food objects relevant to each species ecology. How insects with small nervous systems are able to encode these cues innately is an area of intense study for ecologists and neuroscientists alike. Here, we used the solitary generalist pollinator Eristalinus aeneus to understand how the innate search template used to identify multiple floral species can arise through a small number of sensory cues spanning multiple modalities. We found that innate floral choices of the hoverfly E. aeneus are a product of contextual integration of broad, plant-based olfactory cues and visual cues, where a combination of radial symmetry and reflection in the 500-700 nm wavelength range was particularly important. Our study, therefore, shows how tiny brains can efficiently encode multimodal cues to identify multiple relevant objects without prior experience.

animal behavior and cognition↗

bioRxiv2021

Connecting neuromodulation, brain development, and life history timing associated with ecological speciation in Rhagoletis pomonella

Host shifts are considered a key generator of insect biodiversity. For insects, adaptation to new host plants often requires changes in larval/pupal development and behavioural preference towards new hosts. Neurochemicals play key roles in both development and behaviour, and therefore provide a potential source for such synchronization. Here, we correlated life history timing, brain development, and corresponding levels of 14 neurochemicals in Rhagoletis pomonella (Diptera: Tephritidae), a species undergoing ecological speciation through an ongoing host shift from hawthorn to apple fruit. These races exhibit differences in pupal diapause timing as well as adult behavioural preference with respect to their hosts. This difference in behavioral preference is coupled with differences in neurophysiological response to host volatiles. We found that apple race pupae exhibited adult brain morphogenesis three weeks faster after an identical simulated winter than the hawthorn race, which correlated with significantly lower titres of several neurochemicals. In some cases, particularly biogenic amines, differences in titres were reflected in the mature adult stage, when host preference is exhibited. In summary, life history timing, neurochemical titre, and brain development can be coupled in this speciating system, providing new hypotheses for the origins of new species through host shifts.

ecology↗