TY - JOUR A1 - Hornick, Thomas A1 - Richter, Anett A1 - Harpole, William Stanley A1 - Bastl, Maximilian A1 - Bohlmann, Stephanie A1 - Bonn, Aletta A1 - Bumberger, Jan A1 - Dietrich, Peter A1 - Gemeinholzer, Birgit A1 - Grote, Rüdiger A1 - Heinold, Bernd A1 - Keller, Alexander A1 - Luttkus, Marie L. A1 - Mäder, Patrick A1 - Motivans Švara, Elena A1 - Passonneau, Sarah A1 - Punyasena, Surangi W. A1 - Rakosy, Demetra A1 - Richter, Ronny A1 - Sickel, Wiebke A1 - Steffan‐Dewenter, Ingolf A1 - Theodorou, Panagiotis A1 - Treudler, Regina A1 - Werchan, Barbora A1 - Werchan, Matthias A1 - Wolke, Ralf A1 - Dunker, Susanne T1 - An integrative environmental pollen diversity assessment and its importance for the Sustainable Development Goals JF - Plants, People, Planet N2 - Societal Impact Statement Pollen relates to many aspects of human and environmental health, which protection and improvement are endorsed by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. By highlighting these connections in the frame of current challenges in monitoring and research, we discuss the need of more integrative and multidisciplinary pollen research related to societal needs, improving health of humans and our ecosystems for a sustainable future. Summary Pollen is at once intimately part of the reproductive cycle of seed plants and simultaneously highly relevant for the environment (pollinators, vector for nutrients, or organisms), people (food safety and health), and climate (cloud condensation nuclei and climate reconstruction). We provide an interdisciplinary perspective on the many and connected roles of pollen to foster a better integration of the currently disparate fields of pollen research, which would benefit from the sharing of general knowledge, technical advancements, or data processing solutions. We propose a more interdisciplinary and holistic research approach that encompasses total environmental pollen diversity (ePD) (wind and animal and occasionally water distributed pollen) at multiple levels of diversity (genotypic, phenotypic, physiological, chemical, and functional) across space and time. This interdisciplinary approach holds the potential to contribute to pressing human issues, including addressing United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, fostering social and political awareness of these tiny yet important and fascinating particles. KW - aerobiology KW - allergy KW - diversity KW - environmental monitoring KW - food safety KW - paleoecology KW - palynology KW - pollination Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-276487 VL - 4 IS - 2 SP - 110 EP - 121 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Peters, Birte A1 - Keller, Alexander A1 - Leonhardt, Sara Diana T1 - Diets maintained in a changing world: Does land-use intensification alter wild bee communities by selecting for flexible generalists? JF - Ecology and evolution N2 - Biodiversity loss, as often found in intensively managed agricultural landscapes, correlates with reduced ecosystem functioning, for example, pollination by insects, and with altered plant composition, diversity, and abundance. But how does this change in floral resource diversity and composition relate to occurrence and resource use patterns of trap-nesting solitary bees? To better understand the impact of land-use intensification on communities of trap-nesting solitary bees in managed grasslands, we investigated their pollen foraging, reproductive fitness, and the nutritional quality of larval food along a land-use intensity gradient in Germany. We found bee species diversity to decrease with increasing land-use intensity irrespective of region-specific community compositions and interaction networks. Land use also strongly affected the diversity and composition of pollen collected by bees. Lack of suitable pollen sources likely explains the absence of several bee species at sites of high land-use intensity. The only species present throughout, Osmia bicornis (red mason bee), foraged on largely different pollen sources across sites. In doing so, it maintained a relatively stable, albeit variable nutritional quality of larval diets (i.e., protein to lipid (P:L) ratio). The observed changes in bee–plant pollen interaction patterns indicate that only the flexible generalists, such as O. bicornis, may be able to compensate the strong alterations in floral resource landscapes and to obtain food of sufficient quality through readily shifting to alternative plant sources. In contrast, other, less flexible, bee species disappear. KW - bee decline KW - biodiversity exploratories KW - foraging KW - metabarcoding KW - pollen nutrients KW - solitary bees Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-312786 SN - 2045-7758 VL - 12 IS - 5 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Castillo, Ruth A1 - Wurdack, Mareike A1 - Pauli, Thomas A1 - Keller, Alexander A1 - Feldhaar, Heike A1 - Polidori, Carlo A1 - Niehuis, Oliver A1 - Schmitt, Thomas T1 - Evidence for a chemical arms race between cuckoo wasps of the genus Hedychrum and their distantly related host apoid wasps JF - BMC Ecology and Evolution N2 - Background Brood parasites can exert strong selection pressure on their hosts. Many brood parasites escape their detection by mimicking sensory cues of their hosts. However, there is little evidence whether or not the hosts are able to escape the parasites’ mimicry by changing these cues. We addressed this question by analyzing cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) profiles of Cerceris and Philanthus wasps and their brood parasites, cuckoo wasps mimicking the CHC profiles of their hosts. Some of these hosts use hydrocarbons to preserve their prey against fungal infestation and thus, they cannot significantly change their CHC composition in response to chemical mimicry by Hedychrum brood parasites. Results We found that the CHC overlap between brood parasites and their hosts was lower in case of host wasps not preserving their prey than in case of prey-preserving host wasps, whose CHC evolution is constrained. Furthermore, the CHC profiles in non-preserving host wasps is more strongly diversified in females than in males, thus in the sex that is chemically mimicked by brood parasites. Conclusion Our results provide evidence for a chemical arms race between those hosts that are liberated from stabilizing selection on their chemical template and their parasites. KW - chemical mimicry KW - philanthidae KW - hymenoptera KW - evolutionary arms race KW - cuticular hydrocarbons KW - chrysididae Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-301289 VL - 22 IS - 1 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - König, Sebastian A1 - Krauss, Jochen A1 - Keller, Alexander A1 - Bofinger, Lukas A1 - Steffan‐Dewenter, Ingolf T1 - Phylogenetic relatedness of food plants reveals highest insect herbivore specialization at intermediate temperatures along a broad climatic gradient JF - Global Change Biology N2 - The composition and richness of herbivore and plant assemblages change along climatic gradients, but knowledge about associated shifts in specialization is scarce and lacks controlling for the abundance and phylogeny of interaction partners. Thus, we aimed to test whether the specialization of phytophagous insects in insect‐plant interaction networks decreases toward cold habitats as predicted by the ‘altitude niche‐breadth hypothesis’ to forecast possible consequences of interaction rewiring under climate change. We used a non‐invasive, standardized metabarcoding approach to reconstruct dietary relationships of Orthoptera species as a major insect herbivore taxon along a broad temperature gradient (~12°C) in Southern Germany. Based on Orthoptera surveys, feeding observations, collection of fecal pellets from >3,000 individuals of 54 species, and parallel vegetation surveys on 41 grassland sites, we quantified plant resource availability and its use by herbivores. Herbivore assemblages were richer in species and individuals at sites with high summer temperatures, while plant richness peaked at intermediate temperatures. Corresponding interaction networks were most specialized in warm habitats. Considering phylogenetic relationships of plant resources, however, the specialization pattern was not linear but peaked at intermediate temperatures, mediated by herbivores feeding on a narrow range of phylogenetically related resources. Our study provides empirical evidence of resource specialization of insect herbivores along a climatic gradient, demonstrating that resource phylogeny, availability, and temperature interactively shape the specialization of herbivore assemblages. Instead of low specialization levels only in cold, harsh habitats, our results suggest increased generalist feeding due to intraspecific changes and compositional differences at both ends of the microclimatic gradient. We conclude that this nonlinear change of phylogeny‐based resource specialization questions predictions derived from the ‘altitude‐niche breadth hypothesis’ and highlights the currently limited understanding of how plant‐herbivore interactions will change under future climatic conditions. KW - Alps KW - diet breadth KW - distance‐based specialization index KW - herbivores KW - interaction networks KW - metabarcoding KW - microclimate KW - Orthoptera KW - plant richness KW - temperature gradient Y1 - 2022 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-276441 VL - 28 IS - 13 SP - 4027 EP - 4040 ER -