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42 results for “pollinator ecology”
Data for: Pollinator and habitat-mediated selection as potential contributors to ecological speciation in two closely related species
<p>In ecological speciation, incipient species diverge due to natural selection that is ecologically based. In flowering plants, different pollinators could mediate that selection (pollinator-mediated divergent selection) or other features of the environment that differ between habitats of two species could do so (environment-mediated divergent selection). Although these mechanisms are well understood, they have received little rigorous testing, as few studies of divergent selection across sites of closely related species include both floral traits that influence pollination and vegetative traits that influence survival. This study employed common gardens in sites of the two parental species and a hybrid site, each containing advanced generation hybrids along with the parental species, to test these forms of ecological speciation in plants of the genus <em>Ipomopsis</em>. Three vegetative traits (specific leaf area, leaf trichomes, and photosynthetic water-use efficiency) and five floral traits (corolla length and width, anther insertion, petal color, nectar production) were analyzed for impacts on fitness components (survival to flowering and seeds per flower, respectively). These traits exhibited strong clines across the elevational gradient in the hybrid zone, with narrower clines in theory reflecting stronger selection or higher genetic variance. Plants with long corollas and inserted anthers had higher seeds per flower at the <em>I. tenuituba </em>site, whereas selection favored the reverse condition at the <em>I. aggregata</em> site, a signature of divergent selection. In contrast, no divergent selection due to variation in survival was detected on any vegetative trait. Selection within the hybrid zone most closely resembled selection within the <em>I. aggregata</em> site. Across traits, the strength of divergent selection was not significantly correlated with width of the cline, which was better predicted by evolvability (standardized genetic variance). These results support the role of pollinator-mediated divergent selection in ecological speciation and illustrate the importance of genetic variance in determining divergence across hybrid zones.</p>
Complementary effects of pollination and biocontrol services enable ecological intensification in macadamia orchards
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Data for: Pollinator and habitat-mediated selection as potential contributors to ecological speciation in two closely related species
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Reliably predicting pollinator abundance: challenges of calibrating process-based ecological models
<p>1. Pollination is a key ecosystem service for global agriculture but evidence of pollinator population declines is growing. Reliable spatial modelling of pollinator abundance is essential if we are to identify areas at risk of pollination service deficit and effectively target resources to support pollinator populations. Many models exist which predict pollinator abundance but few have been calibrated against observational data from multiple habitats to ensure their predictions are accurate.</p> <p>2. We selected the most advanced process-based pollinator abundance model available and calibrated it for bumblebees and solitary bees using survey data collected at 239 sites across Great Britain. We compared three versions of the model: one parameterised using estimates based on expert opinion, one where the parameters are calibrated using a purely data-driven approach and one where we allow the expert opinion estimates to inform the calibration process.</p> <p>3. All three model versions showed significant agreement with the survey data, demonstrating this model's potential to reliably map pollinator abundance. However, there were significant differences between the nesting/floral attractiveness scores obtained by the two calibration methods and from the original expert opinion scores.</p> <p>4. Our results highlight a key universal challenge of calibrating spatially-explicit, process-based ecological models. Notably, the desire to reliably represent complex ecological processes in finely mapped landscapes necessarily generates a large number of parameters, which are challenging to calibrate with ecological and geographical data that is often noisy, biased, asynchronous and sometimes inaccurate. Purely data-driven calibration can therefore result in unrealistic parameter values, despite appearing to improve model-data agreement over initial expert opinion estimates. We therefore advocate a combined approach where data-driven calibration and expert opinion are integrated into an iterative Delphi-like process, which simultaneously combines model calibration and credibility assessment. This may provide the best opportunity to obtain realistic parameter estimates and reliable model predictions for ecological systems with expert knowledge gaps and patchy ecological data.</p>
The functional ecology of bat pollination in the African sausage tree Kigelia africana (Bignoniaceae)
<p>Plants often interact with a wide range of animal floral visitors that can vary in their pollination effectiveness. Flowers of the African sausage tree Kigelia africana are be visited by bats and bush babies during the night and by birds during the day. We studied floral traits (phenophases, scent, colour and nectar chemistry) and the visitation frequency and pollination effectiveness of different flower visitors to determine if K. africana is functionally specialized for bat-pollination. We found that flower opening corresponds with bat activity, flowers emit scent dominated by aliphatic esters and alcohols, and that nectar is produced in copious amounts accessible to bats. Pollen deposition on stigmas was twenty-fold greater per-visit by bats than it was per-visit by birds, likely a result of the close morphological fit between snouts of bats and the flowers. However, bat visits appear to be rare at some sites and the delayed senescence of flowers that are open throughout the morning provides an opportunity for additional pollination by birds. We conclude that K. africana is primarily adapted for bat pollination, but is also able</p>
Data from: Does biological intimacy shape ecological network structure? A test using a brood pollination mutualism on continental and oceanic islands
Biological intimacy—the degree of physical proximity or integration of partner taxa during their life cycles—is thought to promote the evolution of reciprocal specialization and modularity in the networks formed by co‐occurring mutualistic species, but this hypothesis has rarely been tested. Here, we test this "biological intimacy hypothesis" by comparing the network architecture of brood pollination mutualisms, in which specialized insects are simultaneously parasites (as larvae) and pollinators (as adults) of their host plants to that of other mutualisms which vary in their biological intimacy (including ant‐myrmecophyte, ant‐extrafloral nectary, plant‐pollinator and plant‐seed disperser assemblages). We use a novel dataset sampled from leafflower trees (Phyllanthaceae: Phyllanthus s. l. [Glochidion]) and their pollinating leafflower moths (Lepidoptera: Epicephala) on three oceanic islands (French Polynesia) and compare it to equivalent published data from congeners on continental islands (Japan). We infer taxonomic diversity of leafflower moths using multilocus molecular phylogenetic analysis and examine several network structural properties: modularity (compartmentalization), reciprocality (symmetry) of specialization and algebraic connectivity. We find that most leafflower‐moth networks are reciprocally specialized and modular, as hypothesized. However, we also find that two oceanic island networks differ in their modularity and reciprocal specialization from the others, as a result of a supergeneralist moth taxon which interacts with nine of 10 available hosts. Our results generally support the biological intimacy hypothesis, finding that leafflower‐moth networks (usually) share a reciprocally specialized and modular structure with other intimate mutualisms such as ant‐myrmecophyte symbioses, but unlike nonintimate mutualisms such as seed dispersal and nonintimate pollination. Additionally, we show that generalists—common in nonintimate mutualisms—can also evolve in intimate mutualisms, and that their effect is similar in both types of assemblages: once generalists emerge they reshape the network organization by connecting otherwise isolated modules.
Data from: Ecological causes and consequences of flower color polymorphism in a self-pollinating plant (Boechera stricta)
Intraspecific variation in flower color is often attributed to pollinator-mediated selection, yet this mechanism cannot explain flower color polymorphisms in self-pollinating species. Indirect selection mediated via biotic and abiotic stresses could maintain flower color variation in these systems. The selfing forb, Boechera stricta, typically displays white flowers, but some individuals produce purple flowers. We quantified environmental correlates of flower color in natural populations. To disentangle plasticity from genotypic variation, we performed a multiyear field experiment in five gardens. In controlled conditions, we evaluated herbivore preferences and the effects of drought stress and soil pH on flower color expression. In natural populations, purple-flowered individuals experienced lower foliar herbivory than did their white-flowered counterparts. This pattern also held in the common gardens. Additionally, low-elevation environments induced pigmented flowers (plasticity), and the likelihood of floral pigmentation decreased with source elevation of maternal families (genetic cline). Viability selection favored families with pigmented flowers. In the laboratory, herbivores exerted greater damage on tissue derived from white- vs purple-flowered individuals. Furthermore, drought induced pigmentation in white-flowered lineages, and white-flowered plants had a fecundity advantage in the well-watered control. Flower color variation in selfing species is probably maintained by herbivory, drought stress, and other abiotic factors that vary spatially.
Data associated with: A phylogenetic perspective on ecological specialisation reveals hummingbird and insect pollinators have generalist diets
<p>Specialisation in food resource use is a crucial process that fosters species coexistence in plant-animal networks, contributing to the maintenance of biodiversity, ecological complexity, and community stability. Notably, although there is a vast literature on ecological specialisation in pollination systems, the evolutionary similarity among the plant species visited by particular pollinators has been largely ignored. Here, we apply a robust phylogenetic approach to analyse whether the evolutionary relatedness of plant species is a significant factor in mediating pollinator visits and how it relates to the morphology of interacting species. We quantified ecological and clade specialisation of hummingbird and insect species in three mutualistic networks from the Costa Rican highlands and associated these metrics with species traits. We found that hummingbirds were overall ecologically more specialised than insects (i.e. visited a less diverse set of plant species). However, when evaluating the phylogenetic relatedness among the visited plant species, all hummingbird species and most insects had overdispersed diets, which indicates they visited phylogenetically distant plant species in the community. Moreover, a great proportion of these clade generalists visited plant species with a great variation in corolla length, showing a lack of preference for this morphological trait. Altogether, our results demonstrate that by incorporating plant phylogeny to network analysis, pollinator species were generalists and that corolla length weakly influences plant-pollinator interactions in the three studied networks. A phylogenetic perspective should occupy a central role in the study of specialisation since it contributes to understanding the interplay between ecological and evolutionary processes in mutualistic networks. Future research should focus on evaluating whether the phylogenetic structure of animal diets mediates patterns of interactions in different types of mutualisms and environmental contexts, linking these patterns to other floral traits. This knowledge may be valuable for deepening our comprehension of the underlying mechanisms shaping ecological networks.</p>
Data supplementing Lichtenberg et al. (2018) Costs and benefits of alternative food handling tactics help explain facultative exploitation of pollination mutualisms. Ecology
<p>This dataset contains data and scripts that supplement the publication</p> <p>Lichtenberg et al. (2018) Costs and benefits of alternative food handling tactics help explain facultative exploitation of pollination mutualisms. Ecology 99: 1815-1824.</p> <p>https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ecy.2395</p> <p> </p> <p>Please cite the above article if you use any of the included data or code.</p> <p> </p> <p>Files are described in README.md.</p>
The functional ecology of bat pollination in the African sausage tree Kigelia africana (Bignoniaceae)
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Data from: Does biological intimacy shape ecological network structure? A test using a brood pollination mutualism on continental and oceanic islands
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Data from: Noise pollution alters ecological services: enhanced pollination and disrupted seed dispersal
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Data from: Flower-derived environmental DNA reveals community diversity, species abundances, and ecological interactions in bee pollinators
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Data associated with: A phylogenetic perspective on ecological specialisation reveals hummingbird and insect pollinators have generalist diets
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Reliably predicting pollinator abundance: challenges of calibrating process-based ecological models
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Data from: Ecological causes and consequences of flower color polymorphism in a self-pollinating plant (Boechera stricta)
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The pollination ecology and mouthpart morphology of a pollen-feeding fly <em>Incurviseta</em> cf. <em>maculifrons</em> (Diptera: Lauxaniidae) in the Australian Alpine
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Dataset: Sibara filifolia pollination ecology
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Data from: Unraveling the ecological and evolutionary impacts of a plant invader on the pollination of a native plant
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Data from: Historical changes in northeastern US bee pollinators related to shared ecological traits
Pollinators such as bees are essential to the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. However, despite concerns about a global pollinator crisis, long-term data on the status of bee species are limited. We present a long-term study of relative rates of change for an entire regional bee fauna in the northeastern United States, based on >30,000 museum records representing 438 species. Over a 140-y period, aggregate native species richness weakly decreased, but richness declines were significant only for the genus Bombus. Of 187 native species analyzed individually, only three declined steeply, all of these in the genus Bombus. However, there were large shifts in community composition, as indicated by 56% of species showing significant changes in relative abundance over time. Traits associated with a declining relative abundance include small dietary and phenological breadth and large body size. In addition, species with lower latitudinal range boundaries are increasing in relative abundance, a finding that may represent a response to climate change. We show that despite marked increases in human population density and large changes in anthropogenic land use, aggregate native species richness declines were modest outside of the genus Bombus. At the same time, we find that certain ecological traits are associated with declines in relative abundance. These results should help target conservation efforts focused on maintaining native bee abundance and diversity and therefore the important ecosystems services that they provide.
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Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.