Pollinator effectiveness is affected by intraindividual behavioral variation

Oecologia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avery L. Russell ◽  
Andrea M. Fetters ◽  
Elizabeth I. James ◽  
Tia-Lynn Ashman
Author(s):  
Carl N. Keiser ◽  
James L.L. Lichtenstein ◽  
Colin M. Wright ◽  
Gregory T. Chism ◽  
Jonathan N. Pruitt

The field of animal behavior has experienced a surge of studies focusing on functional differences among individuals in their behavioral tendencies (‘animal personalities’) and the relationships between different axes of behavioral variation (‘behavioral syndromes’). Many important developments in this field have arisen through research using insects and other terrestrial arthropods, in part, because they present the opportunity to test hypotheses not accessible in other taxa. This chapter reviews how studies on insects and spiders have advanced the study of animal personalities by describing the mechanisms underlying the emergence of individual variation and their ecological consequences. Furthermore, studies accounting for animal personalities can expand our understanding of phenomena in insect science like metamorphosis, eusociality, and applied insect behavior. In addition, this chapter serves to highlight some of the most exciting issues at the forefront of our field and to inspire entomologists and behaviorists alike to seek the answers to these questions.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin Ballantyne ◽  
Katherine C. R. Baldock ◽  
Luke Rendell ◽  
P. G. Willmer

AbstractAccurate predictions of pollination service delivery require a comprehensive understanding of the interactions between plants and flower visitors. To improve measurements of pollinator performance underlying such predictions, we surveyed visitation frequency, pollinator effectiveness (pollen deposition ability) and pollinator importance (the product of visitation frequency and effectiveness) of flower visitors in a diverse Mediterranean flower meadow. With these data we constructed the largest pollinator importance network to date and compared it with the corresponding visitation network to estimate the specialisation of the community with greater precision. Visitation frequencies at the community level were positively correlated with the amount of pollen deposited during individual visits, though rarely correlated at lower taxonomic resolution. Bees had the highest levels of pollinator effectiveness, with Apis, Andrena, Lasioglossum and Osmiini bees being the most effective visitors to a number of plant species. Bomblyiid flies were the most effective non-bee flower visitors. Predictions of community specialisation (H2′) were higher in the pollinator importance network than the visitation network, mirroring previous studies. Our results increase confidence in existing measures of pollinator redundancy at the community level using visitation data, while also providing detailed information on interaction quality at the plant species level.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly L. P. Long ◽  
Linda L. Chao ◽  
Yurika Kazama ◽  
Anjile An ◽  
Kelsey Y. Hu ◽  
...  

AbstractBackgroundIndividual reactions to traumatic stress vary dramatically, yet the biological basis of this variation remains poorly understood. Recent studies have demonstrated surprising plasticity of oligodendrocytes and myelin in the adult brain, providing a potential mechanism by which aberrant structural and functional changes arise in the brain following trauma exposure.MethodsWe tested the hypothesis that gray matter myelin contributes to traumatic stress-induced behavioral variation. We exposed adult rats to a single, severe stressor and used a multimodal approach to characterize avoidance, startle, and fear-learning behavior. We quantified oligodendrocyte and myelin content in multiple brain areas and compared these measures to behavioral metrics. We then induced overexpression of the oligodendrogenic transcription factor Olig1 in the adult rat dentate gyrus (DG) to test the potential, causal role of oligodendrogenesis in behavioral variation. Lastly, T1-/T2-weighted estimates of myelin were compared to trauma-induced symptom profiles in humans.ResultsOligodendrocytes and myelin in the DG of the hippocampus positively correlated with stress-induced avoidance behaviors in male rats. In contrast, myelin levels in the amygdala positively correlated with contextual fear learning. Olig1 overexpression increased place avoidance compared to control virus animals, indicating that increased oligodendrocyte drive in the DG is sufficient to induce an avoidance behavioral phenotype. Finally, variation in myelin correlated with trauma-induced symptom profiles in humans in a region-specific manner that mirrored our rodent findings.ConclusionsThese results demonstrate a species-independent relationship between region-specific, gray matter oligodendrocytes and myelin and differential behavioral phenotypes following traumatic stress exposure. This study provides a novel biological framework for understanding the mechanisms that underlie individual variance in sensitivity to traumatic stress.


2018 ◽  
Vol 329 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 373-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola J. Nelson ◽  
Susan N. Keall ◽  
Jeanine M. Refsnider ◽  
Anna L. Carter

1981 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Depue ◽  
Judith F. Slater ◽  
Heidi Wolfstetter-Kausch ◽  
Daniel Klein ◽  
Eric Goplerud ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Pat Willmer

This chapter examines pollination syndromes, floral constancy, and pollinator effectiveness. Flowers show enormous adaptive radiation, but the same kind of flower reappears by convergent evolution in many different families. Thus many families produce rather similar, simple bowl-shaped flowers like buttercups; many produce similar zygomorphic tubular lipped flowers; and many produce fluffy flower heads of massed (often white) florets. These broad flower types are the basis of the idea of pollination syndromes—the flowers have converged on certain morphologies and reward patterns because they are exploiting the abilities and preferences of particular kinds of visitor. After providing an overview of pollination syndromes, the chapter explains why pollination syndromes can be defended. It then considers flower constancy, along with the distinction between flower visitors and effective pollinators. It concludes with some observations on how flower visitors can contribute to speciation of plants through specialization and through their constancy.


Science ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 367 (6482) ◽  
pp. 1112-1119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerit Arne Linneweber ◽  
Maheva Andriatsilavo ◽  
Suchetana Bias Dutta ◽  
Mercedes Bengochea ◽  
Liz Hellbruegge ◽  
...  

The genome versus experience dichotomy has dominated understanding of behavioral individuality. By contrast, the role of nonheritable noise during brain development in behavioral variation is understudied. Using Drosophila melanogaster, we demonstrate a link between stochastic variation in brain wiring and behavioral individuality. A visual system circuit called the dorsal cluster neurons (DCN) shows nonheritable, interindividual variation in right/left wiring asymmetry and controls object orientation in freely walking flies. We show that DCN wiring asymmetry instructs an individual’s object responses: The greater the asymmetry, the better the individual orients toward a visual object. Silencing DCNs abolishes correlations between anatomy and behavior, whereas inducing DCN asymmetry suffices to improve object responses.


Apidologie ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Konzmann ◽  
Margareta Kluth ◽  
Deniz Karadana ◽  
Klaus Lunau

AbstractHeriades truncorum (Megachilidae) is a specialist bee that forages on Asteraceae and collects pollen by tapping its abdomen on pollen-presenting florets which places the grains directly in the ventral scopa. We tracked pollen transfer by female H. truncorum between conspecific inflorescences of Inula ensifolia and Pulicaria dysenterica by labelling pollen with quantum dots. On average, bees transferred 31.14 (I. ensifolia) and 9.96 (P. dysenterica) pollen grains from the last visited inflorescence, 39% and 45% of which were placed on receptive styles. Pollen germination ratio is significantly lower for inflorescences of P. dysenterica visited by one H. truncorum (0.13%) compared with open control inflorescences (0.51%), which suggests that the bees mainly transfer self-pollen of these self-incompatible plants. Thus, a single visit by H. truncorum does not grant the plant high reproductive success, but the bees’ abundance and flower constancy might reduce this disadvantage.


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