At the moment Karin and I are in the UK for a couple of weeks. I had work to do as an external examiner at the University of Swansea, plus we wanted to catch up with some family and friends. Our main base has been the home of our mates Ian and Simone and we’ve enjoyed some warm, muggy evenings sitting in their garden chewing the fat. Every now and again my eyes have been drawn to the activities of bumblebees as they move in and out of the foliage of a small Silver Fir. The bees are attracted to the large colonies of an aphid that is feeding on the tree’s trunk, from which they are collecting honeydew, as you can see in the photograph above.
When we think of the diets of bees we automatically think “nectar and pollen”. Honeydew, as a sugar-rich fluid, fits broadly into this concept, though as far as I know there’s been little study of its relative importance as a food source for bees. Aside from a few “vulture bees”, all of the 20,000 or so species are vegetarian. And therein lies a problem. Bees evolved from carnivorous wasps and so the evolution of bees, and their complex ecologies, is tied into this profound dietary shift toward a plant-based diet.
A particular issue that has hardly been investigated until recently is that the ratio of elements within meat is very different to that of plants. In particular, animal tissue has a high ratio of sodium (Na) relative to potassium (K), whereas for plants the ratio is reversed – high ratio of K:Na.
In a new conceptual review paper with my colleagues Zuzanna Filipiak and Michał Filipiak, we have explored the implications of this difference in elemental ratios for bee ecology and evolution, and for the conservation of these important insects. The paper is open access and you can download a copy by following a link in this reference:
Bees provide important ecological services, and many species are threatened globally, yet our knowledge of wild bee ecology and evolution is limited. While evolving from carnivorous ancestors, bees had to develop strategies for coping with limitations imposed on them by a plant-based diet, with nectar providing energy and essential amino acids and pollen as an extraordinary, protein- and lipid-rich food nutritionally similar to animal tissues. Both nectar and pollen display one characteristic common to plants, a high ratio of potassium to sodium (K:Na), potentially leading to bee underdevelopment, health problems, and death. We discuss why and how the ratio of K:Na contributes to bee ecology and evolution and how considering this factor in future studies will provide new knowledge, more accurately depicting the relationship of bees with their environments. Such knowledge is essential for understanding how plants and bees function and interact and is needed to effectively protect wild bees.
As part of our roles as ambassadors of the new conservation organisation Restore (more of which later this year), several of us including Dave Goulson, George McGavin, and myself, are promoting this online petition to get the government to take the issue of neonicotinoid pesticides seriously. Here’s some text from Dave explaining the situation with a link to a petition that you can sign:
“For three years in a row our government has granted farmers special permission to use banned neonicotinoid pesticides on sugar beet. This is contrary to the expert advice of their own Expert Committee on Pesticides, who specifically recommended that permission should not be granted. It also flies in the face of a huge body of scientific evidence showing that these chemicals are phenomenally toxic to all insect life, and that their use on any crop contaminates soils, hedgerow plants, and nearby streams and ponds for years to come. We are in a crisis, with insect populations in freefall. It is about time our government woke up to this, and acted accordingly. This petition https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/631948 is a necessary means of holding the government to account. Please sign and share, as signing will ensure the issue is debated in Parliament.”
This petition now has more than 15,000 signatures which ensures that it gets a response from the Government. If it reaches 100,000 mark, it will trigger a debate in Parliament. Please sign and promote this important initiative!
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.
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.
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!
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!
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!
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:
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.
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.
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.
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 6th 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 7th 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 8th 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
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.
