Impact of the introduced honeybees (Apis mellifera, Apidae) on Teide National Park (Tenerife, Canary Islands)

Valido, Alfredo; Rodríguez-Rodríguez, María C.; Jordano, Pedro

doi:10.7818/ecos.2014.23-3.08

Cited by 14 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…Plants could also suffer as a result of such floral competition, if honeybees out‐compete more efficient native pollinators. This has been documented following the introduction of beehives in Tenerife, where plants that received high honeybee visitation exhibited a drop in native bee visitation and a subsequent decrease in their reproductive success (Valido, Rodríguez‐Rodríguez, & Jordano, ), and in Spain where high rates of honeybee visitation have been shown to limit pollen tube growth in a common wild plant following spillover from an adjacent mass‐flowering crops (Magrach et al., ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Alien honeybees increase pollination risks for range‐restricted plants

Norfolk

Gilbert

Eichhorn

2018

Diversity and Distributions

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Aim: Range-restricted species are of high conservation concern, and the way in which they interact with more widespread species has implications for their persistence.Here, we determine how the specialization of mutualistic interactions varies with respect to the geographic range size of plants and pollinators and assess how they respond to the introduction of the alien honeybee. We also compare network characteristics (connectance, specialization and nestedness) between an invaded low mountain and non-invaded high mountain network.Location: St Katherine Protectorate, South Sinai, Egypt. Methods:We quantified bee-plant interactions in 42 plots between April and July 2013 and created visitation networks for the low mountains (beehives present) and the high mountains (beehives absent). We then compared visitation network metrics between range-restricted, regionally distributed and widespread plants and pollinators and assessed topological differences between the low and high mountain networks.Results: Range-restricted bees were involved in a significantly higher number of total interactions than regional and widespread native bees, but showed no evidence of increased generalization. In contrast, range-restricted plants were involved in fewer interactions and exhibited significantly higher specialization and a high dependency on range-restricted pollinators. The introduced honeybee acted as a super-generalist and was associated with an increase in network-level generalization and nestedness.Honeybees exhibited high levels of resource overlap with range-restricted bees and made few visits to range-restricted plant species.Main conclusions: Range-restricted plants are more specialized in their interactions than range-restricted pollinators, suggesting that the forces shaping the structure of interaction network can vary between partners. Alien honeybees made few visits to range-restricted plants, but exhibited disproportionately high levels of floral competition with range-restricted bees. If high levels of competition lead to population declines then specialized range-restricted plants will be at higher risk of pollen deficits than more widespread species. K E Y W O R D S endemism, honeybee, invasive, mutualism, pollination, range size BIOSKETCHES Olivia Norfolk is a Lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University whose research focuses on how anthropogenic disturbance affects ecological networks. She is interested in how mutualistic plant-pollinator interactions are maintained across agricultural landscapes and how trends compare between temperate and arid regions. The authors are part of a collaboration established during her doctorate at the University of Nottingham.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Alien honeybees increase pollination risks for range‐restricted plants

Norfolk

Gilbert

Eichhorn

2018

Diversity and Distributions

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“…Beekeeping activity is authorized within the National Park for honey production. Each spring, up to 2,700 beehives are installed in 18 apiaries (14 beehives/km 2 ) 43–45 .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some vertebrate species frequently visit the flowers of E . wildpretii 18,20,43 . To include these mutualistic interactions, we used additional censuses with the observer located at >10 m (Supplementary Table S3B).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Honeybees disrupt the structure and functionality of plant-pollinator networks

Valido

Rodríguez-Rodríguez

Jordano

2019

Sci Rep

Self Cite

184

173

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The honeybee is the primary managed species worldwide for both crop pollination and honey production. Owing to beekeeping activity, its high relative abundance potentially affects the structure and functioning of pollination networks in natural ecosystems. Given that evidences about beekeeping impacts are restricted to observational studies of specific species and theoretical simulations, we still lack experimental data to test for their larger-scale impacts on biodiversity. Here we used a three-year field experiment in a natural ecosystem to compare the effects of pre- and post-establishment stages of beehives on the pollination network structure and plant reproductive success. Our results show that beekeeping reduces the diversity of wild pollinators and interaction links in the pollination networks. It disrupts their hierarchical structural organization causing the loss of interactions by generalist species, and also impairs pollination services by wild pollinators through reducing the reproductive success of those plant species highly visited by honeybees. High-density beekeeping in natural areas appears to have lasting, more serious negative impacts on biodiversity than was previously assumed.

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“…Because entire reviews have been written just on the impacts of the introduced species from the Apis and Bombus genera (e.g., [66,67,68,69]), I have collated selected references for these genera in separate tables in the supplementary materials. Despite the abundance of research on these two genera, the literature is still mixed on their potential impacts and the results of many studies are either inconclusive or contradictory [66].…”

Section: Negative Impactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Positive and Negative Impacts of Non-Native Bee Species around the World

Russo

2016

Insects

134

165

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Though they are relatively understudied, non-native bees are ubiquitous and have enormous potential economic and environmental impacts. These impacts may be positive or negative, and are often unquantified. In this manuscript, I review literature on the known distribution and environmental and economic impacts of 80 species of introduced bees. The potential negative impacts of non-native bees include competition with native bees for nesting sites or floral resources, pollination of invasive weeds, co-invasion with pathogens and parasites, genetic introgression, damage to buildings, affecting the pollination of native plant species, and changing the structure of native pollination networks. The potential positive impacts of non-native bees include agricultural pollination, availability for scientific research, rescue of native species, and resilience to human-mediated disturbance and climate change. Most non-native bee species are accidentally introduced and nest in stems, twigs, and cavities in wood. In terms of number of species, the best represented families are Megachilidae and Apidae, and the best represented genus is Megachile. The best studied genera are Apis and Bombus, and most of the species in these genera were deliberately introduced for agricultural pollination. Thus, we know little about the majority of non-native bees, accidentally introduced or spreading beyond their native ranges.

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Impact of the introduced honeybees (Apis mellifera, Apidae) on Teide National Park (Tenerife, Canary Islands)

Cited by 14 publications

References 0 publications

Alien honeybees increase pollination risks for range‐restricted plants

Alien honeybees increase pollination risks for range‐restricted plants

Honeybees disrupt the structure and functionality of plant-pollinator networks

Positive and Negative Impacts of Non-Native Bee Species around the World

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