Adjacent crop type impacts potential pollinator communities and their pollination services in remnants of natural vegetation

Reynolds, Victoria A.; Cunningham, Saul A.; Rader, Romina; Mayfield, Margaret M.

doi:10.1111/ddi.13537

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…In Western Australia, where boneseed is being targeted for eradication and the applicability of honey bee detection methods are being investigated, boneseed plants are rare in the landscape. This makes boneseed flowers spatially rare at a time of year when invaded habitat is flush with mass flowering by Australian native insect‐pollinated species such as Eucalyptus spp., Acacia spp., Hibbertia spp., and agricultural crops such as Brassica napus L. (Reynolds et al, 2022). This situation reduces the likelihood for honey bee visitation to isolated boneseed plant flowers.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can honey bees be used to detect rare plants? Taking an eDNA approach to find the last plants in a weed eradication program

Batchelor,

Bell,

Campos

et al. 2023

Environmental DNA

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The detection of rare taxa, crucial to conservation and biosecurity, presents many challenges that emerging technologies have the potential to address or avoid. Analysis of environmental DNA (eDNA) is a promising tool for the detection of rare species, especially when applied in a way that exploits natural processes to accumulate biological material (natural aggregation). This study investigated the potential of using honey bees as aggregators of pollen eDNA to detect Chrysanthemoides monilifera subsp. monilifera (boneseed), an introduced species targeted for eradication in Western Australia. We developed a species‐specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR)‐based assay that detected boneseed pollen at levels as low as 70 grains per million in a constructed pollen mixture. The assay was successfully used on wild‐caught bees from large boneseed populations, confirming they collect boneseed pollen. However, our results did not detect boneseed DNA in honey bee pollen collected from hive pollen traps near isolated boneseed plants. We hypothesize that a combination of low abundance of boneseed individuals, vast alternative flower resources at the time of boneseed flowering, and honey bee behavior and ecology may have led to lack of detection. We propose ways in which future work using honey bees to detect rare species can be improved. We also outline how other eDNA substrates (e.g., air and water samples) could be used with the PCR assay we have developed. More broadly, our work highlights the potential of eDNA techniques to detect rare species in biosecurity and conservation contexts and contributes to the development of pollinator‐based detection.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can honey bees be used to detect rare plants? Taking an eDNA approach to find the last plants in a weed eradication program

Batchelor,

Bell,

Campos

et al. 2023

Environmental DNA

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“…Insects—predominantly bees (e.g., Apis mellifera L. [Apidae], Neopasiphaae mirabilis Perkins [Colletidae], and species in the genus Leioproctus [Colletidae]) and, to a lesser extent, beetles (e.g., family Melyridae and genus Phlogistus [Cleridae]) and flies (e.g., genus Comptosia [Bombyliidae])—serve as pollinators in this system (Loy et al, 2015; Reynolds et al, 2022). We recognize insect pollinators can travel long distances between plants when foraging.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Patterns of frequency and density dependence are highly variable in diverse annual flowering plant communities

James

Mayfield

Dwyer

2023

Ecology

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Applications of ecological theory to natural communities often assume that competitive, negative density‐dependent processes are the only type of interaction important for diversity maintenance. Recent advances suggest that positive interactions within trophic levels (e.g., plant–plant) may also affect plant coexistence. Though positive plant–plant interactions theoretically might result in positive or nonmonotonic frequency or density dependence (FD/DD), less is known about how commonly these patterns occur or which ecological processes might result in such patterns in natural plant communities. In this study we tested for signals of variable frequency and density dependence in annual flowering plant communities in Western Australia and searched for evidence that interactions among plants during flowering might induce positive or nonmonotonic FD/DD in flowering plants. Using four common annual wildflower species, we ask if plant fecundity exhibited positive or nonmonotonic FD/DD and if pollinator‐mediated plant–plant interactions during flowering change patterns of FD/DD relative to pollinator‐independent plant interactions. Three species exhibited nonmonotonic (hump‐shaped) density dependence, and only one species experienced strictly negative density dependence. Each species exhibited a different pattern of frequency dependence (positive, negative, weakly nonmonotonic, and no detectable frequency dependence). Pollinator‐mediated plant–plant interactions during flowering induced both nonmonotonic density dependence and negative frequency dependence in one species. Importantly, the extent of variation in FD/DD observed in our study brings into question the dominance of negative density and frequency dependence in theory, suggesting instead that demographic responses of plants to their communities fall along a continuum of possible density‐ and frequency‐dependent patterns.

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“…They are also reported regarding the movement of pollinators from semi-natural habitats into crops [15], and the aim of this study is to test for spillover effects in an invasive plant context. Spillover effects of bordering cropland upon native plants are well described, causing, for example, pollinator dilution [16,17] or increasing numbers of agriculturally subsidized natural enemies [18][19][20]. However, there is a dearth of such literature regarding spillover effects of invasive plants, and both agricultural and invasive contexts lack community-level plant-pollinator network studies ( [21], but see [22]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spillover effects from invasive Acacia alter the plant–pollinator networks and seed production of native plants

Brett,

Strauss,

van Wyk

et al. 2024

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Invasive flowering plants can disrupt plant–pollinator networks. This is well documented where invasives occur amongst native plants; however, the potential for ‘spillover’ effects of invasives that form stands in adjacent habitats are less well understood. Here we quantify the impact of two invasive Australian species, Acacia saligna and Acacia longifolia , on the plant–pollinator networks in fynbos habitats in South Africa. We compared networks from replicate 1 ha plots of native vegetation ( n = 21) that were subjected to three treatments: (1) at least 400 m from flowering Acacia; (2) adjacent to flowering Acacia , or (3) adjacent to flowering Acacia where all Acacia flowers were manually removed. We found that native flowers adjacent to stands of flowering Acacia received significantly more insect visits, especially from beetles and Apis mellifera capensis , and that visitation was more generalized. We also recorded visitation to, and the seed set of, three native flowering species and found that two received more insect visits, but produced fewer seeds, when adjacent to flowering Acacia . Our research shows that ‘spillover’ effects of invasive Acacia can lead to significant changes in visitation and seed production of native co-flowering species in neighbouring habitats—a factor to be considered when managing invaded landscapes.

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Adjacent crop type impacts potential pollinator communities and their pollination services in remnants of natural vegetation

Cited by 9 publications

References 66 publications

Can honey bees be used to detect rare plants? Taking an eDNA approach to find the last plants in a weed eradication program

Can honey bees be used to detect rare plants? Taking an eDNA approach to find the last plants in a weed eradication program

Patterns of frequency and density dependence are highly variable in diverse annual flowering plant communities

Spillover effects from invasive Acacia alter the plant–pollinator networks and seed production of native plants

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