Tag Archives: Conservation

The hidden potential value of woodland trees for wild bee assemblages – lead author Guthrie Allen introduces his recently published study

Note: This is a guest blog post by Guthrie Allen who is a PhD candidate at the University of East Anglia.

Though often overlooked, woodlands have great potential to support wild bees in farmed landscapes. Both the understory and canopy can provide large quantities of early-season nectar. The pollen of woodland-tree taxa such as Acer can form a large proportion of the early-season diets of bumblebees and solitary bees. Even the pollen from wind-pollinated trees such as Quercus can form a significant part of the diets of several common solitary bee species. Woodlands are also believed to provide ample nesting opportunities. These factors may explain why several studies have found positive correlations between bee abundance and/or diversity and woodland cover at the landscape scale. Despite this, a large-scale European study has shown that interior woodland understories support very few bees compared to exposed woodland edges.

Sampling the canopy – at heights of up to 20 metres – is not easy, but unlike the understory, this habitat remains sun-exposed after canopy closure and could be favourable for bees. In Europe, however, our knowledge of bee activity in the woodland canopy is very limited. Furthermore, whilst canopy-tree taxa have been identified as suitable food sources for many bees, we have little evidence that these trees are used for forage when located within woodlands. To explore the role of the canopy, we trapped bees in late spring in the understory and canopy – at the exposed edges and in the interiors – of 15 woodland sites across an English agricultural landscape.

A significant proportion of bee abundance was found in the canopy, represented by 23 of the 29 total sampled species. Interior canopy activity was much higher when nectar-producing Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) trees were nearby. Communities differed between the canopy and understory: of the seven most common species sampled, three were more active in the understory, while the opposite was true of one species – Bombus lapidarius. Interestingly, we found the sex ratio of the most abundant species – B. pratorum – to be female-skewed in the canopy. For four of these species, and contrary to expectations, we found no evidence that understory activity was any higher at woodland edges compared to woodland interiors.

Further research is needed to understand community differences between the canopy and understory. Nonetheless, our results suggest that both these habitats have a significant role to play in supporting farmland bees. We demonstrate that a diverse bee community has the potential to exploit canopy resources, with nectar-producing trees in woodland interiors likely to provide forage for many bees. And we show the unexpected potential of interior woodland understories to support bee abundance.

Here’s the full reference with a link to the open access paper:

Allen, G. & Davies, R.G. (2022) Canopy sampling reveals hidden potential value of woodland trees for wild bee assemblages. Insect Conservation and Diversity. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/icad.12606

Here’s the abstract:

Woodlands can play an important role in supporting bee abundance and diversity in agricultural landscapes. However, in temperate-region studies, the canopy is rarely sampled, and our understanding of its contribution is limited. To explore this, we sampled bees in late spring with blue vane traps in the understory (n = 30) and crowns of mature Quercus robur (n = 35) at the exposed southern edges and in the interiors (ca. 25–75 m from woodland edges) of 15 woodland sites across an English agricultural landscape. A significant proportion of bee abundance and diversity was found in the canopy: canopy-trap catches were estimated to be a third as large as understory-trap catches, and 23 of the 29 sampled species were present in the canopy. Of the seven most common species sampled, four were equally abundant in woodland edge and interior traps; three were more abundant in understory traps, and a single species—Bombus lapidarius—was more abundant in canopy traps. The sex ratio of the most abundant species, B. pratorum, was female-skewed in the canopy. Additionally, the presence of nearby Acer pseudoplatanus trees in flower greatly increased canopy-trap catches in woodland interiors. These results suggest that both the woodland canopy and understory have a significant role to play in supporting farmland bee communities; they indicate the importance of nectar-producing trees in woodland interiors, opening avenues for canopy-based management; and they demonstrate that a diverse bee community has the potential to exploit canopy floral resources.

Some seaweeds have “pollinators”! New research published this week

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Most of us have at some time stared in fascination at the life contained within the pools that form on rocky shores at low tide. But none of us realized that a whole new class of ecological interaction was taking place!

The 12,000 or so described (and many un-named) seaweeds are incredibly important organisms. Their diverse and abundant photosynthesizing fronds make them one of the main primary producers in coastal seas, creating food and habitat for a huge range of animals. Not only that, but some – the coralline seaweeds – lock up vast amount of CO₂ as calcium carbonate and help to create reef systems in the same way as coral.

Although scientists have studied seaweeds for hundreds of years, many aspects of their ecology are still unknown. Their detailed mode of reproduction, for example has only been studied in a small proportion of species.

In a newly published study in the journal Science, French PhD researcher Emma Lavaut and her colleagues have shown that small isopod crustaceans – relatives of woodlice and sea slaters – facilitate the movement of the equivalent of seaweed sperm (termed “spermatia”) from male to female reproductive structures in just the same way that bees and other pollinators move pollen between flowers, so fertilizing female gametes.

Your read that correctly: some seaweeds have pollinators!

It’s an incredible finding! And the implications of this are enormous: Emma and her colleagues have added a whole new branch of life to the examples of sedentary (fixed-place) organisms that require a third party to enable their reproduction. In addition to being a fascinating biological discovery, it has significant environmental and sustainability implications.

Seaweeds are a diverse group of macroalgae that appeared more than one billion years ago, at least 500 million years before the evolution of what we think of as “true” plants, such as the flowering plants, conifers, cycads, ferns and mosses. Sexual reproduction in the brown and green seaweeds, which include kelps, wracks and sea lettuces, involves spermatia that are mobile and use a flagellum to swim through the water to seek out female reproductive structures. However, Emma studied a seaweed, Gracilaria gracilis, which belongs to the Rhodophyta or red seaweeds, and none of the species in this group have these swimming sperm equivalents.

Sexual reproduction in the red seaweeds has therefore always been something of a mystery. Three quarters of species have separate male and female individuals and so they cannot mate with themselves. It was assumed that the gametes were just released into water currents that haphazardly transported them to the female reproductive organs, much as wind pollinated grasses and pine trees release their vast clouds of pollen on land. The authors of this new study, however, point out that most sexual reproduction by these red seaweeds takes place in the relatively still waters of rock pools, a habitat that they mimicked in the laboratory in a series of elegant aquarium experiments.

The isopod crustaceans are attracted to the seaweed because they provide a habitat away from predators and a supply of food: they graze on the microalgae that colonise the seaweed’s fronds. Picking up spermatia and moving them between fronds is a side-effect of this activity by the small invertebrates. As you can see from the illustration above, the isopods and the seaweed are engaged in a “double mutualism“: a plus sign (+) indicates a positive effect of one species on another, while a minus sign (-) indicates a negative impact.

What I find especially fascinating about this research is that both the seaweed (Gracilaria gracilis) and the isopod (Idotea balthica) were originally described as species more than 200 years ago. They also have an extremely wide distribution. The isopod is found around the coasts of Europe and down the eastern seaboard of the Americas. The seaweed is pretty much found globally. These are not rare, unusual species, yet the interaction between them has only just been discovered! This is a point that I made in my recent book Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society: quite often, species that are well known interact in previously undocumented ways because no one has had the time or inspiration to look closely at them.

Although the idea that small sea creatures might be helping seaweeds to reproduce sounds very fanciful, there is a precedence for this discovery. Back in 2016, in a paper published in Nature Communications, a group of Mexican researchers led by Brigitta van Tussenbroek showed that a species of seagrass is pollinated by a diverse assemblage of small crustaceans and polychaete worms. Seagrasses are flowering plants, not seaweeds, but clearly this type of mutually beneficial relationship can exist between different species in the oceans.

Rhodophyta are the most diverse group of seaweeds, with more than 7,000 known species. They are especially abundant on coastal shores, oceanic habitats that are under huge pressure from infrastructure development, pollution, and climate change. At the same time, these seaweeds are economically important and millions of tonnes of them are collected every year as food, as nutritional and pharmaceutical supplements, and to produce agar. In order to conserve these seaweed populations, we need to better understand their ecology and their environmental requirements.

The work by Emma Lavaut and colleagues suggests that interactions with their “pollinators” may be a critical aspect of this understanding. In the same way that “Save the Bees” has been a rallying call for conserving interactions between species on land, we may soon hear this message echoed in “Save the Isopods”. At the very least, I have to add a new section to the second edition of my book!

Full disclosure: I was one of the reviewers of the original manuscript submitted to Science by Emma and her co-authors. It’s a rare privilege to review a study and think: “Wow! This is a game-changer!” and including this paper it’s happened to me only a handful of times. The editors at Science kindly invited my colleague Dr Zong-Xin Ren and myself to write a Perspective piece about the work and we were delighted to do so.

Image credits: Isopod and diatom images from Lavaut et al (2022). Gracilaria image by Emoody26 at English Wikipedia CC BY 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3455016. Design by Shijia Wen and Jeff Ollerton.

Pollinator-flower interactions in gardens during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown of 2020: the data paper has just been published!

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During the lockdown period of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, many pollination ecologists were stuck at home: universities and research institutes were closed and restrictions on travel meant that it was not possible to get out and do field work. In order to keep active and motivated, and to turn adversity into an opportunity, an ad hoc network of more than 70 researchers from 15 different countries (see the map above) decided to collect standardised data on the plant-pollinator networks in their own gardens and nearby public spaces.

When combined with information about location, size of garden, floral diversity, how the garden is managed, and so forth, this would provide some useful data about how gardens support pollinators. For those with kids at home it could also be a good way of getting them out into fresh air and giving them something to do!

Following discussions, several different protocols were instigated which depended upon the time available to the researchers, including one that mirrored the UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme’s FIT (Flower-Insect Timed) counts.

The resulting data set of almost 47,000 visits by insects and birds to flowers, as well as information about flowers that were never visited, is freely available and will be an invaluable resource for pollination ecologists. For example, analysing the links between ornamental flowers that share pollinators with fruits and vegetables such as apples and beans, will allow us to make recommendations for the best plants to grow in home gardens that can increase yields of crops.

There’s an old saying about turning adversity into a positive outcome: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”, and the researchers were pleased to find that there’s one record of Citrus limon in the data set!

The paper describing the data set has just been published in the Journal of Pollination Ecology and you can download a PDF of the paper and the associated data for free by following this link.

Sincere thanks to all of my co-authors for their commitment to the project!

Published today: a new children’s book about bees and other pollinators!

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One of the projects with which I’ve been involved over the last year has been advising on a new book for children about bees and other pollinators, called Can We Really Help The Bees? Written by Katie Daynes and wonderfully illustrated by Róisín Hahessy, it tells the story of what happens when a swarm of bees comes to the window to let a group of children know that they, and their friends the other pollinators, are in trouble. Can they help? Yes they can!

It’s been a real pleasure working with Katie and Róisín on this project for Usborne Publishing and seeing the ideas, text, and illustrations evolve over time. I’ve written a short post over at the Usborne blog with some ideas about how to get children involved in helping the pollinators, and I think that it’s worth repeating one of the things that I wrote: everyone can make a difference to the wildlife around us and no one is too young to be involved!

Because of my involvement with Can We Really Help The Bees? I wasn’t able to include it on my curated list of the best books about bees and other pollinators at the Shepherd site. But it definitely should be on there and is highly recommended!

Tracking trends in Neotropical pollinators: how good is our understanding and is more data always better?

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In my recent book Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society I discussed the current state of our knowledge of how populations of pollinators have changed over time. Although we have some quite detailed data for particular, often charismatic, species or for certain geographic localities or regions, for most species we know almost nothing. As I wrote in the chapter “The shifting fates of pollinators”:

“For most pollinators we are ‘data deficient’, in other words, we don’t know how their populations are performing. They could be doing well, but they may not be”

This is particularly true for those regions for the world that hold the greatest terrestrial biodiversity: the tropics. For the vast majority of species in the tropics we know precious little about trends in their populations and how their distributions have changed over time in the face of wide-scale land transformation and recent climatic shifts. Filling in some of the gaps in our knowledge of Neotropical pollinator distributions is one of its aims of SURPASS2, a collaboration between South American and UK ecologists, and one of several research and outreach projects with which I’m involved.

In a new study that’s come out of that work, led by Rob Boyd from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, we’ve used the GBIF database to look at the changing distributions of four important groups of pollinators: bees, hoverflies, leaf-nosed bats and hummingbirds. In particular we were interested in understanding the kinds of biases that come with such publicly available data, and whether recent efforts to add data to GBIF has improved our understanding of trends.

Our overall conclusion is that there are significant limitations and biases inherent in all of these data sets even for groups like hummingbirds which one would imagine are well documented by scientists and bird-watching naturalists. In addition, having more data does not necessarily help matters: it can introduce its own biases.

The paper is open access and feely available; here’s the reference with a link:

Boyd, R. J., Aizen, M.A., Barahona-Segovia, R.M., Flores-Prado, L., Fontúrbel, F.E., Francoy, T.M., Lopez-Aliste, M., Martinez, L., Morales, C.L., Ollerton, J., Pescott, O.L., Powney, G.D., Saraiva, A.M., Schmucki, R., Zattara, E.E., & Carvell, C. (2022) Inferring trends in pollinator distributions across the Neotropics from publicly available data remains challenging despite mobilization efforts. Diversity and Distributions (in press)

Here’s the abstract:

Aim
Aggregated species occurrence data are increasingly accessible through public databases for the analysis of temporal trends in the geographic distributions of species. However, biases in these data present challenges for statistical inference. We assessed potential biases in data available through GBIF on the occurrences of four flower-visiting taxa: bees (Anthophila), hoverflies (Syrphidae), leaf-nosed bats (Phyllostomidae) and hummingbirds (Trochilidae). We also assessed whether and to what extent data mobilization efforts improved our ability to estimate trends in species’ distributions.

Location
The Neotropics.

Methods
We used five data-driven heuristics to screen the data for potential geographic, temporal and taxonomic biases. We began with a continental-scale assessment of the data for all four taxa. We then identified two recent data mobilization efforts (2021) that drastically increased the quantity of records of bees collected in Chile available through GBIF. We compared the dataset before and after the addition of these new records in terms of their biases and estimated trends in species’ distributions.

Results
We found evidence of potential sampling biases for all taxa. The addition of newly-mobilized records of bees in Chile decreased some biases but introduced others. Despite increasing the quantity of data for bees in Chile sixfold, estimates of trends in species’ distributions derived using the postmobilization dataset were broadly similar to what would have been estimated before their introduction, albeit more precise.

Main conclusions
Our results highlight the challenges associated with drawing robust inferences about trends in species’ distributions using publicly available data. Mobilizing historic records will not always enable trend estimation because more data do not necessarily equal less bias. Analysts should carefully assess their data before conducting analyses: this might enable the estimation of more robust trends and help to identify strategies for effective data mobilization. Our study also reinforces the need for targeted monitoring of pollinators worldwide.

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SURPASS2 has been a hugely productive project as you’ll see if you look at the Publications page of the website. There’s much more to come and I’ll report on those research papers as they appear.

Claims that only 10% – and not 75% – of crops are pollinator dependent are misleading and dishonest

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Earlier this week the Genetic Literacy Project site posted an essay entitled ‘10% — not 75% — of crops pollinator-dependent: Our World in Data debunks claims that global food supply is imminently endangered by ‘disappearing’ insects‘. That click-bait title is hugely misleading, some of the purported ‘facts’ are incorrect, and indeed the whole thing reeks of dishonesty and bad faith.

First the misleading title. This ‘debunks’ claim actually compares two different things: 75% of CROPS being dependent on pollinators versus 10% of crop YIELD. However, even if we focus on the 10% claim, a small increase in yield can be the difference between profit and bankruptcy for small-scale farmers. And most of the world’s farmers are small-scale and living on the borderline between loss and break-even. In addition, there’s no acknowledgement of the food production from home gardens, allotments, and community gardens, which is significant but largely unquantified.

Next, by focusing on yield and comparing, say, wind-pollinated wheat with insect-pollinated apples, the article takes no account of the fact that many of these crops that depend to some extent on pollinators mainly provide essential vitamins and minerals – not calories – to diets. When I tweeted about this earlier in the week, one person commented that they describe the insect-pollinated foods as ‘an important source of flavour and colour in our diets, rice and wheat are all well and good, but you do kinda need something more than grey slop to live’. Another said: ‘I’m so glad you mentioned this. I’m sick of reading articles that praise innovations to increase calories, when what we need is better nutrition from vitamins, minerals & fibres’.

Both great points, and well made.

That essay was also factually incorrect when it described roots crops such as carrots or some of the leafy cabbages and lettuces as not requiring pollinators. Many varieties of these crops ARE pollinator dependent: how do they think we get the seed for the next year’s crop?! And there are many crops and varieties that have not been evaluated for their dependency on pollinators: the 75% figure actually refers to the 115 most productive crop plants (Klein et al. 2007).

When I tweeted about the essay I commented that I was very disappointed by ‘Our World in Data’ – they are usually better than this when it comes to the facts. What I hadn’t appreciated at the time was that in fact the Genetic Literacy Project had highjacked the original piece by Hannah Ritchie and reworked it to give it a very different slant*.

This is where it starts to get dishonest and in fact the Genetic Literacy Project (GLP) has form in this area. The Sourcewatch site describes the GLP as ‘a corporate front group that was formerly funded by Monsanto’ with a remit to ‘shame scientists and highlight information helpful to Monsanto and other chemical producers’. In other words it’s heavily tied to Big Agriculture which, of course, would like us to believe that there’s not an issue with declining pollinators, that pesticides and agricultural intensification are our friends, and that Everything Is OK. Read the full account here.

Frankly, the GLP is so tainted that I’d not believe anything that they publish.

Pollinator decline and the role of pollinators in agriculture are complex issues. If you’d like to know more about the importance of pollinators to agriculture, complete with some accurate and objective facts, then there’s a whole chapter devoted to the topic in my book Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society.

*Note that I’ve been communicating with Hannah about the root and leaf crop issue and she accepts that this needs to change in the original. She’s also asked the Genetic Literacy Project to take down their version as it contravenes copyright.

Reference

Klein, A.-M., Vaissière, B.E., Cane, J.H. et al. (2007) Importance of pollinators in
changing landscapes for world crops. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B
274: 303–313.

New article just published: ‘Pollinators and pollination: myths, misunderstandings and much more to discover’

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My first (and hopefully not my last) article for the magazine British Wildlife has just appeared in the April issue. Entitled ‘Pollinators and pollination: myths, misunderstandings and much more to discover’ you can get a preview here: https://www.britishwildlife.com/article/volume-32-number-5-page-316-323

The article focuses on some of the myths and misunderstandings that I dealt with in my book Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society. It also points out that, even in a place like Britain with a long tradition of natural history study, there’s still much for the patient observer to discover. If you’re interested in a PDF, drop me a line via the Contact page.

SCAPE 2020 – pollinators & pollination conference: here’s the programme

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There’s still a few hours left in which to register to attend the SCAPE 2020 pollinators and pollination conference. Follow the links on the website: https://scape-pollination.org/

The programme is more or less finalised and is shown below. We have an amazing range of topics being presented from both established and early career researchers, including two keynote lectures, plus posters. It’s going to be a very exciting weekend of science!

PROGRAMME

Talk types:

K = Keynote

ST = Standard (10 minutes talk + 5 for questions)

F = Flash talk (5 minutes, no questions)

Friday 6^th November – all timings are GMT (London) time

Timing	Type	Name	Title	Ref
09.00 –09.15		Jeff Ollerton	Open conference and welcome
09.15 –10.15	K	Lynn Dicks	Understanding the risks to human well-being from pollinator decline	K.01
10.15 –10.30		Comfort break	Time to top up your coffee
Session 1		Chair: Jeff Ollerton	Agriculture – 1
10.30 – 10.45	ST	Ke Chen	Indirect and additive effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on insect pollination and crop yield of raspberry under different fertilizer levels	1.01
10.45 – 11.00	ST	Julia Osterman	Enhancing mason bee populations for sweet cherry pollination	1.02
11.00 – 11.15	ST	Idan Kahnonitch	Viral distributions in bee communities: associations to honeybee density and flower visitation frequency	1.03
11.15 – 11.30	ST	Anna Birgitte Milford	Who takes responsibility for the bees?	1.04
11.30 – 11.45	ST	Emma Gardner	Boundary features increase and stabilise bee populations and the pollination of mass-flowering crops in rotational systems	1.05
11.45 – 12.00	ST	Stephanie Maher	Evaluating the quantity and quality of resources for pollinators on Irish farms	1.06
12.00 –12.05	F	Thomas Timberlake	Pollinators and human nutrition in rural Nepal: experiences of remote data collection during a global pandemic	1.07
12.05 –12.15		Comfort break
Session 2		Chair: Jane Stout	Agriculture – 2
12.15 – 12.30	ST	Michael Image	The impact of agri-environment schemes on crop pollination services at national scale	2.01
12.30 – 12.45	ST	Nicola Tommasi	Plant – pollinator interactions in sub-Saharan agroecosystems	2.02
12.45 – 13.00	ST	Tal Shapira	The combined effects of resource-landscape and herbivory on pollination services in agro-ecosystems	2.03
13.00 – 13.15	ST	Márcia Motta Maués	Despite the megadiversity of flower visitors, native bees are essential to açai palm (Euterpe oleracea Mart.) pollination at the Amazon estuary	2.04
13.15 – 13.30	ST	Sabrina Rondeau	Quantifying exposure of bumblebee queens to pesticide residues when hibernating in agricultural soils	2.05
13.30 –13.35	F	Maxime Eeraerts	Landscapes with high amounts of mass-flowering fruit crops reduce the reproduction of two solitary bees	2.06
13.35 – 13.40	F	Patricia Nunes-Silva	Crop domestication, flower characteristics and interaction with pollinators: the case of Cucurbita pepo (Cucurbitaceae)	2.07
13.40 – 14.30		Lunch break
Session 3		Chair: Mariano Devoto	Networks and communities
14.30 – 14.45	ST	Kit Prendergast	Plant-pollinator networks in Australian urban bushland remnants are not structurally equivalent to those in residential gardens	3.01
14.45 – 14.50	F	Kavya Mohan	Structure of plant-visitor networks in a seasonal southern Indian habitat	3.02
14.50 – 14.55	F	Opeyemi Adedoja	Asynchrony among insect pollinator groups and flowering plants with elevation	3.03
14.55 – 15.10	ST	Yael Mandelik	Rangeland sharing by cattle and bees: moderate grazing does not impair bee communities and resource availability	3.04
15.10 – 15.25	ST	Felipe Torres-Vanegas	Landscape change reduces pollen quality indirectly by shifting the functional composition of pollinator communities	3.05
15.25 – 15.40	ST	Isabela Vilella-Arnizaut	Quantifying plant-pollinator interactions in the Prairie Coteau	3.06
15.40 – 15.55		Comfort break
Session 4		Chair: Nina Sletvold	Conservation perspectives – 1
15.55 – 16.10	ST	Lise Ropars	Seasonal dynamics of competition between honeybees and wild bees in a protected Mediterranean scrubland	4.01
16.10 – 16.25	ST	Philip Donkersley	A One-Health model for reversing honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) decline	4.02
16.25 – 16.40	ST	Nicholas Tew	Nectar supply in gardens: spatial and temporal variation	4.03
16.40 – 16.55	ST	Peter Graystock	The effects of environmental toxicants on the health of bumble bees and their microbiomes	4.04
16.55 – 17.10	ST	Hauke Koch	Flagellum removal by a heather nectar metabolite inhibits infectivity of a bumblebee parasite	4.05
17.10 – 17.25		Comfort break
Session 5		Chair: Anders Nielsen	Conservation perspectives – 2
17.25 – 17.40	ST	Miranda Bane	Pollinators on Guernsey and a Pesticide-free Plan	5.01
17.40 – 17.55	ST	Jamie Wildman	Reintroducing Carterocephalus palaemon to England: using the legacy of a locally extinct butterfly as a (morpho)metric of future success	5.02
17.55 – 18.10	ST	Sjirk Geerts	Invasive alien Proteaceae lure some, but not other nectar feeding bird pollinators away from native Proteaceae in South African fynbos	5.03
18.10 – 18.25	ST	Sissi Lozada Gobilard	Habitat quality and connectivity in kettle holes enhance bee diversity in agricultural landscapes	5.04
18.25 –18.45		Comfort break
18.45 – 23.59		Themed discussion rooms open

Saturday 7^th November – all timings are GMT (London) time

Timing	Type	Name	Title	Ref
08.55 – 09.00		Jeff Ollerton	Reminders and announcements
Session 6		Chair: Jeff Ollerton	Conservation perspectives – 3
09.00 – 09.15	ST	Paolo Biella	The effects of landscape composition and climatic variables on pollinator abundances and foraging along a gradient of increasing urbanization	6.01
09.15 – 09.30	ST	James Rodger	Potential impacts of pollinator declines on plant seed production and population viability	6.02
09.30 – 09.45	ST	Emilie Ellis	Moth assemblages within urban domestic gardens respond positively to habitat complexity, but only at a scale that extends beyond the garden boundary	6.03
09.45 – 10.00	ST	Samuel Boff	Novel pesticide class impact foraging behaviour in wild bees	6.04
10.00 – 10.15		Comfort break	Time to top up your coffee
Session 7		Chair: Jon Agren	Conservation perspectives – 4
10.15 – 10.20	F	Maisie Brett	The impacts of invasive Acacias on the pollination networks of South African Fynbos habitats	7.01
10.20 – 10.25	F	Joseph Millard	Global effects of land-use intensity on local pollinator biodiversity	7.02
10.25 – 10.30	F	Susanne Butschkau	How does land-use affect the mutualistic outcomes of bee-plant interactions?	7.03
10.30 – 10.35	F	Elżbieta Rożej-Pabijan	Impact of wet meadow translocation on species composition of bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Apiformes)	7.04
10.35 – 10.40	F	Lorenzo Guzzetti	May urbanization affect the quality of pollinators diet? A case-study from Milan, Italy.	7.05
10.40 – 10.45	F	Emiliano Pioltelli	Functional traits variation in two bumblebee species along a gradient of landscape anthropization	7.06
10.45 – 11.00		Comfort break
Session 8		Chair: Marcos Mendez	Pollinator behaviour – 1
11.00 – 11.15	ST	Hema Somanathan	Foraging on left-overs: comparative resource use in diurnal and nocturnal bees	8.01
11.15 – 11.30	ST	Sajesh Vijayan	To leave or to stay? Answers from migratory waggle dances in Apis dorsata	8.02
11.30 – 11.45	ST	Balamurali MGS	Decision making in the Asian honeybee Apis cerana is influenced by innate sensory biases and associative learning at different spatial scales	8.03
11.45 – 12.00	ST	Gemma Villagomez	Resource intake of stingless bee colonies in a tropical ecosystem in Ecuador	8.04
12.00 – 12.15	ST	Ola Olsson	Pollen analysis using deep learning – better, stronger, faster	8.05
12.15 – 13.00		Lunch break
Session 9		Chair: Magne Friberg	Pollinator behaviour – 2
13.00 – 13.15	ST	Shuxuan Jing	‘Interviewing’ pollinators in the red clover field: foraging behaviour	9.01
13.15 – 13.30	ST	Océane Bartholomée	How to eat in the shade? Bumblebees’ behavior in partially shaded flower strips	9.02
13.30 – 13.45	ST	Manuela Giovanetti	Megachile sculpturalis: insights on the nesting activity of an alien bee species	9.03
13.45 – 14.00	ST	Zahra Moradinour	The allometry of sensory system in the butterfly Pieris napi	9.04
14.00 – 14.05	F	Pierre Tichit	New insights into the visual ecology of bees	9.05
14.05 – 14.10	F	Fabian Ruedenauer	Does pollinator dependence correlate with the nutritional profile of pollen in plants?	9.06
14.10 – 14.15	F	Hannah Burger	Floral signals involved in host finding by nectar-foraging social wasps	9.07
14.15 – 14.30		Comfort break
Session 10		Chair: ‪ Amy Parachnowitsch	Floral scent
14.30 – 14.45	ST	Herbert Braunschmid	Does the rarity of a flower´s scent phenotype in a deceptive orchid explain its pollination success?	10.01
14.45 – 15.00	ST	Yedra García	Ecology and evolution of floral scent compartmentalization	10.02
15.00 – 15.15	ST	Manoj Kaushalya Rathnayake	Does floral scent changes with pollinator syndrome?	10.03
15.15 – 15.20	F	Hanna Thosteman	The chemical landscape of Arabis alpina	10.04
15.20 – 15.25	F	Laura S. Hildesheim	Patterns of floral scent composition in species providing resin pollinator rewards	10.05
15.25 – 15.30	F	Christine Rose-Smyth	Does Myrmecophila thomsoniana (Orchidaceae) use uncoupled mimicry to obtain pollination?	10.06
15.30 – 15.45		Comfort break
Session 11		Chair: Renate Wesselingh	Pollination ecology and floral evolution – 1
15.45 – 16.00	ST	Rachel Spigler	Adaptive plasticity of floral display and its limits	11.01
16.00 – 16.15	ST	Wendy Semski	Individual flowering schedules and floral display size in monkeyflower: a common garden study	11.02
16.15 – 16.30	ST	Carlos Martel	Specialization for tachinid fly pollination and the evolutionary divergence between varieties of the orchid Neotinea ustulata	11.03
16.30 – 16.45	ST	Marcela Moré	Different points of view in a changing world: The tobacco tree flowers through the eyes of its pollinators in native and non-native ranges	11.05
16.45 – 17.00		Comfort break
17.00 – 18.00		Poster discussion rooms open	A chance to talk with the author of the posters
18.00 – 23.59		Themed discussion rooms open

Sunday 8^th November – all timings are GMT (London) time

Timing	Type	Name	Title	Ref
08.55 – 09.00		Jeff Ollerton	Reminders and announcements
09.00 – 10.00	K	Scott Armbruster	Pollination accuracy explains the evolution of floral movements	K.02
10.00 – 10.15		Comfort break	Time to top up your coffee
Session 12		Chair: Jeff Ollerton	Pollination ecology and floral evolution – 2
10.15 – 10.30	ST	Kazuharu Ohashi	Three options are better than two: complementary nature of different pollination modes in Salix caprea	12.01
10.30 – 10.45	ST	James Cook	Why size matters in fig-pollinator mutualisms	12.02
10.45 – 11.00	ST	Yuval Sapir	Within-population flower colour variation: beyond pollinator-mediated selection	12.03
11.00 – 11.15	ST	Henninge Torp Bie	Flower visitation of the Sticky catchfly (Viscaria vulgaris) on isles within isle.	12.04
11.15 – 11.20
11.20 – 11.30		Comfort break
Session 13		Chair: Yuval Sapir	Pollination ecology and floral evolution – 3
11.30 – 11.45	ST	Jonas Kuppler	Impacts of drought on floral traits, plant-pollinator interactions and plant reproductive success – a meta-analysis	13.01
11.45 – 12.00	ST	Carmen Villacañas de Castro	Cost/benefit ratio of a nursery pollination system in natural populations: a model application	13.02
12.00 – 12.15	ST	Anna E-Vojtkó	Floral and reproductive plant functional traits as an independent axis of plant ecological strategies	13.03
12.15 – 12.30	ST	Camille Cornet	Role of pollinators in prezygotic isolation between calcicolous and silicicolous ecotypes of Silene nutans	13.04
12.30 – 12.45	ST	Courtney Gorman	Phenological and pollinator-mediated isolation among selfing and outcrossing Arabidopsis lyrata populations	13.05
12.45 – 13.45		Lunch break
Session 14		Chair: Rocio Barrales	Pollination ecology and floral evolution – 4
13.45 – 14.00	ST	Danae Laina	Geographic differences in pollinator availability in the habitats shape the degree of pollinator specialization in the deceptive Arum maculatum L. (Araceae)	14.01
14.00 – 14.15	ST	Eva Gfrerer	Is the inflorescence scent of Arum maculatum L. (Araceae) in populations north vs. south of the Alps locally adapted to a variable pollinator climate?	14.02
14.15 – 14.30	ST	Kelsey Byers	Pollinators and visitors to Gymnadenia orchids: historical and modern data reveal associations between insect proboscis and floral nectar spur length	14.03
14.30 – 14.45	ST	Nina Jirgal	Orientation matters: effect of floral symmetry and orientation on pollinator entry angle	14.04
14.45 – 15.00	ST	Alice Fairnie	Understanding the development, evolution and function of the bullseye pigmentation pattern in Hibiscus trionum	14.05
15.00 – 15.15		Comfort break
Session 15		Chair: Maria Clara Castellanos	Pollination ecology and floral evolution – 5
15.15 – 15.30	ST	Jon Ågren	On the measurement and meaning of pollinator-mediated selection	15.01
15.30 – 15.45	ST	Katarzyna Roguz	Plants taking charge: Autonomous self-pollination as response to plants-pollinator mismatch in Fritillaria persica	15.02
15.45 – 16.00	ST	Mario Vallejo-Marin	Bees vs flies: Comparison of non-flight vibrations and implications for buzz pollination	15.03
16.00 – 16.15	ST	Agnes Dellinger	Linking flower morphology to pollen-release dynamics: buzz-pollination in Melastomataceae	15.04
16.15 – 16.30	ST	Lucy Nevard	Are bees and flowers tuned to each other? Variation in the natural frequency of buzz-pollinated flowers.	15.05
16.30 – 16.35	F	Gabriel Chagas Lanes	An investigation of pollen movement and release by poricidal anthers using mathematical billiards	15.06
16.35 – 16.40	F	Rebecca Hoefer	The magnitude of water stress and high soil nitrogen decreases plants reproductive success	15.07
16.40 – 16.45	F	Marta Barberis	May ecotonal plants attract less efficient pollinators to stay on the safe side?	15.08
16.45 – 17.00		Comfort break
Session 16		Chair: Jeff Ollerton	Pollination ecology and floral evolution – 6
17.00 – 17.15	ST	Gabriela Doria	Petal cell shape and flower-pollinator interaction in Nicotiana	16.01
17.15 – 17.30	ST	Nathan Muchhala	The long stems characteristic of bat-pollinated flowers greatly reduce bat search times while foraging	16.02
17.30 – 17.35	F	Juan Isaac Moreira-Hernández	Differential tolerance to heterospecific pollen deposition in sympatric species of bat-pollinated Burmeistera (Campanulaceae: Lobelioideae)	16.03
17.35 – 17.40	F	Juan José Domínguez-Delgado	Does autopolyploidy contribute to shape plant-pollinator interactions?	16.04
17.40 – 17.45	F	Caio Simões Ballarin	How many animal-pollinated plants are nectar-producing?	16.05
17.45 – 17.50	F	Ana Clara Ibañez	Concerted evolution between flower phenotype and pollinators in Salpichroa (Solanaceae)	16.06
17.50 – 18.15		Jeff Ollerton	Prize announcements, conference handover and close.	16.07

Pollinators and pollination in the UK: an introductory workshop – 26th August

Animal deaths in the Australian bushfires even greater than first feared – and what about the plants?

5 Replies

2019-12-27 15.07.16

Earlier this year I reported on the unprecedented Australian bushfires with some reflections of what I was observing during my time as a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of New South Wales – see: How are the Australian bushfires affecting biodiversity? Australia reflections part 4. Karin also wrote a piece about the fires, focusing on the human impacts – see: Climate Change Stories From a Nation on Fire.

At the time scientists and the media were suggesting that perhaps half a billion reptiles, mammals and birds had been killed, a figure that provoked a strong public reaction when accompanied by images of fire-scorched koalas. This was then revised upwards to 1 billion. But it turns out that even a billion is nowhere close to the real number of animal deaths. A new interim report commissioned by WWF-Australia suggests that just under 3 billion animals were either directly killed or displaced. Those which were displaced were vulnerable to feral predators such as foxes and cats, or more likely to succumb to starvation. An article in The Guardian about the WWF-Australia report is worth reading – here’s the link.

The actual figure is 2.69 billion individual animals. Think about that for a moment. That’s about equivalent the number of people living in India and China combined. This is the breakdown for the different animal groups that were assessed:

● 143 million mammals
● 2.46 billion reptiles
● 180 million birds
● 51 million frogs

One thing should be immediately apparent: this is not a complete list of the “animals” that have been killed. A lack of data means that fish, turtles and (crucially) invertebrates such as spiders, bees, beetles, and earthworms, were excluded. Those invertebrates live at much higher densities than any of the animal groups that were assessed and indeed are the sole or principle food for many of those species. The number of insects required to support just the insectivorous birds is staggering: globally, birds are estimated to eat 400-500 million tonnes of insects and other arthropods every year.

Even if we were to consider just the larger invertebrates, those bigger than say 0.5 cm in length (which are a minority – most are considerably smaller), then then the true scale of the animal deaths is going to be one or two orders of magnitude higher. Or possibly more. Thirty billion, 300 billion, 3 trillion…? Who knows? It’s impossible to estimate, we just don’t have enough information about those organisms.

The other major component of wildlife that is missing from the report is the plants. I know that studies of plant mortality are being undertaken at the moment and it will be important that this is given the same level of publicity as the assessments of animals.

Writing in the foreword of the report, Dermot O’Gorman the CEO of WWF-Australia pointed out that: “It’s hard to think of another event anywhere in the world in living memory that has killed or displaced that many animals. This ranks as one of the worst wildlife disasters in modern history”.

I disagree. I think it’s THE worst wildlife disaster in terms of the scale of animal losses over such a short period of time. No doubt deforestation and destruction of grasslands in South America, Asia and Africa has killed more animals and plants. But that’s over a timescale of decades to hundreds of years. Australian wildlife was devastated in a matter of months. And no one knows exactly what the 2020-21 fire season will bring. But I think that we can safely predict further impacts on wildlife – and people.