Historical, current, and future climate niche of the red dwarf honey bee across its native range

AbstractEurope, Africa and the Middle East have several original subspecies of the western honey bee (Apis mellifera L.), each with distinctive characteristics. These subspecies are the product of natural selection in their native range. Nevertheless, anthropogenic impacts such as migratory beekeeping and use of non-native queens result in an admixture of these subspecies and their ecotypes. I aimed to develop a SNP-based method to detect whether queen honey bees were mated with drones from foreign subspecies. For this purpose, Caucasian and Italian queens and drones were reared. Each queen was instrumentally inseminated with mixed semen collected from Caucasian (4 μl) and Italian drones (4 μl). The spermathecae of queens were dissected out after the onset of oviposition. The DNA was extracted from each spermatheca and from the thoraces of Caucasian and Italian drones. Seven regions on mtDNA that were isolated from drones were sequenced to determine the SNPs, enabling the discrimination of Caucasian sperm from Italian in spermathecal contents. Based on one SNP (11606. bp, T/C) residing on the Cytb gene, a specific primer was designed to be used in High Resolution Melting (HRM) analysis. HRM analysis indicated that heteroduplex peak profiles were present in all spermathecal contents of instrumentally inseminated queens. The results provide proof of the concept that the presence of likely non-native mitochondrial lineages can be detected by HRM analysis based on the SNP genotyping of spermathecal contents.

Download Full-text

Pitting Wild Bees Against Managed Honey Bees in Their Native Range, a Losing Strategy for the Conservation of Honey Bee Biodiversity

Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution ◽

10.3389/fevo.2019.00060 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 7 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Cedric Alaux ◽

Yves Le Conte ◽

Axel Decourtye

Keyword(s):

Honey Bee ◽

Honey Bees ◽

Native Range ◽

Wild Bees

Download Full-text

Plant assemblages in British beech woodlands within and beyond native range: Implications of future climate change for their conservation

Forest Ecology and Management ◽

10.1016/j.foreco.2006.09.031 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 236 (2-3) ◽

pp. 385-392 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Sonia Wesche ◽

Keith Kirby ◽

Jaboury Ghazoul

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Future Climate ◽

Future Climate Change ◽

Native Range ◽

Plant Assemblages

Download Full-text

Beyond tracking climate: niche evolution during native range expansion and its implications for novel invasions

10.1101/2021.06.09.447486 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Nicky Lustenhouwer ◽

Ingrid M. Parker

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Range Expansion ◽

Niche Conservatism ◽

Native Range ◽

Niche Evolution ◽

Local Conditions ◽

Niche Expansion ◽

Climate Niche ◽

Niche Shifts ◽

Native Populations

Ecological niche models have been instrumental in understanding and forecasting the widespread shifts in species distributions under global change. However, growing evidence of evolution in spreading populations challenges their key assumption of niche conservatism, limiting model transferability in space and time. Climate niche evolution has been studied extensively in invasive species, but may also occur in native populations tracking climate change, when species encounter novel abiotic conditions that vary with latitude. We compared niche shifts during native range expansion and during invasion in Dittrichia graveolens, a Mediterranean annual plant species that is currently undergoing both types of spread. We asked whether the species' northward native range expansion in Eurasia matched climate change from 1901-1930 to 1990-2019, or if further range expansion was promoted by niche evolution. In addition, we asked how niche expansion in the native range affected forecasts of two ongoing invasions in Australia and California. We quantified niche shifts in environmental space using the analytical framework of niche centroid shift, overlap, unfilling, and expansion (COUE), and examined associated distribution changes in geographic space using Maximum Entropy modeling. Our results show that D. graveolens expanded its native range well beyond what would be sufficient to track climate change, a shift associated with a 5.5% niche expansion to include more temperate climates. In contrast, both invasions showed evidence of niche conservatism, with niche filling depending on invader residence time. Including the expanded native niche in invasion projections added new areas at risk of invasion, but none of these has been colonized at present. We conclude that native populations may track climate change and adapt to novel local conditions in parallel, causing an evolutionary expansion of the climate niche and more widespread range expansion than expected based on climate change alone.

Download Full-text

A comparison of two pollinators: the introduced honey bee Apis mellifera and an indigenous bee Centris tarsata on cashew Anacardium occidentale in its native range of NE Brazil

Journal of Applied Ecology ◽

10.1046/j.1365-2664.1998.00278.x ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 35 (1) ◽

pp. 109-121 ◽

Cited By ~ 71

Author(s):

Breno M. Freitas ◽

Robert J. Paxton

Keyword(s):

Apis Mellifera ◽

Honey Bee ◽

Anacardium Occidentale ◽

Native Range

Download Full-text

Honey bees, Apis mellifera, are important pollinators of the highbush blueberry variety Ventura despite the inability to sonicate

10.1101/551523 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Keanu Martin ◽

Bruce Anderson ◽

Corneile Minnaar ◽

Marinus de Jager

Keyword(s):

Honey Bee ◽

Fruit Quality ◽

Honey Bees ◽

Fruit Production ◽

Bumble Bees ◽

Highbush Blueberry ◽

Agricultural Crops ◽

Native Range ◽

Bee Pollination ◽

Hand Pollination

AbstractAnimal-mediated pollination is an essential ecosystem service which over a third of the world’s agricultural crops depend on. Blueberry fruit production is highly dependent on pollinators and in their native range they are pollinated mostly by bumble bees (Bombus spp.). Demand for blueberries has increased in recent years due to their perceived health benefits. Consequently, blueberry cultivation has expanded well beyond their native range, including several regions where bumble bees are not present. In many areas, honey bees may be the only commercially available pollinators of blueberries because many countries ban the importation of bumble bees. This study aimed to determine the benefits of honey bee pollination on blueberry fruit quality and quantity for the variety Ventura by comparing yields of honey-bee-pollinated flowers to flowers where pollinators had been excluded. Honey bees significantly increased berry mass and diameter. Our results suggest that the presence of honey bee pollinators potentially increases revenue by approximately $864 501/ha in areas without bumble bees. We conclude that Ventura is reliably pollinated by honey bees, and that honey bee pollination may be a useful substitute for bumble bees in areas where bumble bees are absent. We also determined the extent to which blueberry yields could still be improved by comparing fruit quality and quantity under honey bee pollination to fruit quality and quantity achieved through ideal hand pollination. We found that blueberry yields may be still be significantly increased relative to ideal hand pollination and we discuss potential ways to improve the efficiency of honeybee pollination in the future. Additional research is required to study how beneficial honey bees are to fruit yield on varieties as the benefits of honey bees are likely to vary across different varieties.

Download Full-text