The alien's identity: consequences of taxonomic status for the international bumblebee trade regulations

Abstract

International audienceThe species international trade leads to multiple non-native invasions. Besides species invasions, commercial exchanges may also contribute to translocation between closely related taxa or allopatric populations. Consequently, preserving endemic taxa and specificity of local populations require to regulate commercial translocations of species or populations. To be efficient such regulation needs a resolved taxonomy and a thorough analysis of the population structure of native taxa/populations. To provide guidelines for an efficient regulation of the trade of Bombus terrestris within its natural range, we analyzed its taxonomy and its population structure using an integrative taxonomic approach. Our results show that B. terrestris translocations involve two species, three subspecies, and several populations with weak differentiation. These different levels of differentiation imply specific and appropriate regulations of translocations with different levels of prioritization. We ultimately assess the relevance of current policies and propose potentially efficient regulations for policy-makers. Such integrative taxonomic approach should be used in other traded polytypic species

Global warming promotes biological invasion of a honey bee pest

“…The focus of management strategies should therefore firmly be on detection in the early stages of invasion (Hulme, ) by focussing on the global trade in bees and bee products (Neumann et al, ; Ouessou Idrissou et al, ). Options for which are provided by improving the international trade regulations (Lecocq et al, ).…”

Integrating intraspecific differentiation in species distribution models: Consequences on projections of current and future climatically suitable areas of species

“…We chose these three species because their phylogeographic structure and the ESU delimitations were available (Lecocq, Brasero, Martinet et al, ; Lecocq, Coppée et al, ; Lecocq, Dellicour et al, ) (Table ). These lineages/ESUs occurred in quite distinct biogeographic regions (Supporting Information Figure ) and differed considerably in morphology, genetic, behaviour, hair length or phenology (Lecocq, Brasero, Martinet et al, ; Lecocq, Brasero, Meulemeester et al, ; Lecocq, Coppée et al, ; Lecocq, Dellicour et al, ; Lecocq, Rasmont et al, ). These specificities make differences in the climatic requirements between lineages/ESUs likely for all species.…”

“…We attributed the lineage/ESU status to the observation points according to the following criteria. For the data points corresponding to the individuals used in the baseline phylogeographic and ESU delimitation studies (about 5% of the dataset), we used the status underlined by these studies (Lecocq, Brasero, Martinet et al, ; Lecocq, Coppée et al, ; Lecocq, Dellicour et al, ). When the observation was identified to subspecies level (i.e., data were available from previous studies that identified the subspecies of the observations; about 25% of the remaining dataset) and this subspecies status corresponded to a particular lineage/ESU exclusively, we attributed the corresponding lineage/ESU to the observation (see matches between lineages/ESUs and subspecies in Table ).…”

“…In this paper, we analyse how the projections of current and future climatically suitable areas can be affected by using ESU‐based or lineage‐based SDMs compared to a species‐level model. As examples, we use three widespread bumblebee species ( Bombus lapidarius , B. pascuorum and B. terrestris ) with comparable distributions across Europe, for which phylogeography and ESU delimitations are available (Lecocq, Brasero, Martinet, Valterovà, & Rasmont, ; Lecocq, Coppée et al, ; Lecocq, Dellicour et al, ).…”

“…This could pave the way to a massive development of ESU-based SDMs and an improved different responses to climate change when they lead to different results than species-based models. (Lecocq, Brasero, Martinet, Valterovà, & Rasmont, 2015;Lecocq, Coppée et al, 2016;Lecocq, Dellicour et al, 2015).…”