Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2024
Authors
Markus A. K. Sydenham Yoko Dupont Anders Nielsen Jens Olesen Henning Bang Madsen Astrid Brekke Skrindo Claus Rasmussen Megan Sara Nowell Zander Venter Stein Joar Hegland Anders Gunnar Helle Daniel Ingvar Jeuderan Skoog Marianne Strand Torvanger Kaj-Andreas Hanevik Sven Emil Hinderaker Thorstein Paulsen Katrine Eldegard Trond Reitan Graciela Monica RuschAbstract
Climate change, landscape homogenization and the decline of beneficial insects threaten pollination services to wild plants and crops. Understanding how pollination potential (i.e. the capacity of ecosystems to support pollination of plants) is affected by climate change and landscape homogenization is fundamental for our ability to predict how such anthropogenic stressors affect plant biodiversity. Models of pollinator potential are improved when based on pairwise plant-pollinator interactions and pollinator´s plant preferences. However, whether the sum of predicted pairwise interactions with a plant within a habitat (a proxy for pollination potential) relates to pollen deposition on flowering plants has not yet been investigated. We sampled plant-bee interactions in 68 Scandinavian plant communities in landscapes of varying land-cover heterogeneity along a latitudinal temperature gradient of 4–8 C°, and estimated pollen deposition as the number of pollen grains on flowers of the bee-pollinated plants Lotus corniculatus, and Vicia cracca. We show that plant-bee interactions, and the pollination potential for these bee-pollinated plants increase with landscape diversity, annual mean temperature, plant abundance, and decrease with distances to sand-dominated soils. Furthermore, the pollen deposition in flowers increased with the predicted pollination potential, which was driven by landscape diversity and plant abundance. Our study illustrates that the pollination potential, and thus pollen deposition, for wild plants can be mapped based on spatial models of plant-bee interactions that incorporate pollinator-specific plant preferences. Maps of pollination potential can be used to guide conservation and restoration planning.
Authors
Narta ElshaniAbstract
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Authors
Kalkidan Ayele Mulatu Kaue de Sousa Mohammed Ebrahim An Notenbaert Wuletawu Abera Solomon Mwendia Eyuel Girmay Marit JørgensenAbstract
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Authors
Jorunn BørveAbstract
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Authors
Therese With BergeAbstract
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2023
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No abstract has been registered
2022
Authors
Markus A. K. Sydenham Zander Venter Stein R. Moe Katrine Eldegard Michael Kuhlmann Trond Reitan Claus Rasmussen Robert Paxton Yoko Dupont Astrid Brekke Skrindo Megan Sara Nowell Stein Joar Hegland Anders Nielsen Jens Olesen Graciela Monica RuschAbstract
Understanding how niche-based and neutral processes contribute to the spatial variation in plant-pollinator interactions is central to designing effective pollination conservation schemes. Such schemes are needed to reverse declines of wild bees and other pollinating insects and to promote pollination services to wild and cultivated plants. We used data on wild bee interactions with plants belonging to the four tribes Loteae, Trifolieae, Anthemideae, and either spring- or summer-flowering Cichorieae, sampled systematically along a 682km latitudinal gradient to build models that allowed us to (a) predict occurrences of pairwise bee-flower interactions across 115 sampling locations, and (b) estimate the contribution of variables hypothesized to be related to niche-based assembly structuring processes (viz. annual mean temperature, landscape diversity, bee sociality, bee phenology, and flower preferences of bees) and neutral processes (viz. regional commonness and dispersal distance to conspecifics). While neutral processes were important predictors of plant-pollinator distributions, niche-based processes were reflected in the contrasting distributions of solitary bee and bumble bees along the temperature gradient, and in the influence of bee flower preferences on the distribution of bee species across plant types. In particular, bee flower preferences separated bees into three main groups, albeit with some overlap: visitors to spring-flowering Cichorieae; visitors to Anthemideae and summer-flowering Cichorieae; and visitors to Trifolieae and Loteae. Our findings suggest that both neutral and niche-based processes are significant contributors to the spatial distribution of plant-pollinator interactions so that conservation actions in our region should be directed towards areas: near high concentrations of known occurrences of regionally rare bees; in mild climatic conditions; and that are surrounded by heterogeneous landscapes. Given the observed niche-based differences, the proportion of functionally distinct plants in flower-mixes could be chosen to target bee species, or guilds, of conservation concern.
2021
Authors
Markus A. K. Sydenham Zander Venter Trond Reitan Claus Rasmussen Astrid Brekke Skrindo Daniel Skoog Kaj-Andreas Hanevik Stein Joar Hegland Yoko Dupont Anders Nielsen Joseph Chipperfield Graciela Monica RuschAbstract
1. Predicting plant-pollinator interaction networks over space and time will improve our understanding of how environmental change is likely to impact the functioning of ecosystems. Here we propose a framework for producing spatially explicit predictions of the occurrence and number of pairwise plant-pollinator interactions and of the species richness, diversity, and abundance of pollinators visiting flowers. We call the framework ‘MetaComNet’ because it aims to link metacommunity dynamics to the assembly of ecological networks. 2. To illustrate the MetaComNet functionality, we used a dataset on bee-flower networks sampled at 16 sites in southeast Norway along with random forest models to predict bee-flower interactions. We included variables associated with climatic conditions (elevation) and habitat availability within a 250m radius of each site. Regional commonness, site-specific distance to conspecifics, social guild, and floral preference were included as bee traits. Each plant species was assigned a score reflecting its site-specific abundance, and four scores reflecting the bee species that the plant family is known to attract. We used leave-one-out cross-validations to assess the models’ ability to predict pairwise plant-bee interactions across the landscape. 3. The relationship between observed occurrence or absence of interactions and the predicted probability of interactions was nearly proportional (GLMlogistic regression slope = 1.09), matching the data well (AUC = 0.88), and explained 30% of the variation. Predicted probability of interactions was also correlated with the number of observed pairwise interactions (r = 0.32). The sum of predicted probabilities of bee-flower interactions were positively correlated with observed species richness (r = 0.50), diversity (r = 0.48), and abundance (r = 0.42) of wild bees interacting with plant species within sites. 4. Our findings show that the MetaComNet framework can be a useful approach for making spatially explicit predictions and mapping plant-pollinator interactions. Such predictions have the potential to identify areas where the pollination potential for wild plants is particularly high, and where conservation action should be directed to preserve this ecosystem function.