Bee monitoring by community scientists: comparing a collections-based program with iNaturalist.

Bee monitoring, or widespread efforts to document bee community biodiversity, can involve data collection using lethal (specimen collections) or non-lethal methods (observations, photographs). Additionally, data can be collected by professional scientists or by volunteer participants from the general public. Collection-based methods presumably produce more reliable data with fewer biases against certain taxa, while photography-based approaches, such as data collected from public natural history platforms like iNaturalist, can involve more people and cover a broader geographic area.

A longitudinal experiment demonstrates that honey bee colonies managed organically are as healthy and productive as those managed conventionally.

Honey bee colony management is critical to mitigating the negative effects of biotic and abiotic stressors. However, there is significant variation in the practices implemented by beekeepers, which results in varying management systems. This longitudinal study incorporated a systems approach to experimentally test the role of three representative beekeeping management systems (conventional, organic, and chemical-free) on the health and productivity of stationary honey-producing colonies over 3 years.

Six years of wild bee monitoring shows changes in biodiversity within and across years and declines in abundance.

Wild bees form diverse communities that pollinate plants in both native and agricultural ecosystems making them both ecologically and economically important. The growing evidence of bee declines has sparked increased interest in monitoring bee community and population dynamics using standardized methods. Here, we studied the dynamics of bee biodiversity within and across years by monitoring wild bees adjacent to four apple orchard locations in Southern Pennsylvania, USA.

Large ecosystem-scale effects of restoration fail to mitigate impacts of land-use legacies in longleaf pine savannas.

Ecological restoration is a global priority, with potential to reverse biodiversity declines and promote ecosystem functioning. Yet, successful restoration is challenged by lingering legacies of past land-use activities, which are pervasive on lands available for restoration. Although legacies can persist for centuries following cessation of human land uses such as agriculture, we currently lack understanding of how land-use legacies affect entire ecosystems, how they influence restoration outcomes, or whether restoration can mitigate legacy effects.

Agricultural land-use history does not reduce woodland understory herb establishment.

Agricultural land use is a leading cause of habitat degradation, leaving a legacy of ecological impacts long after agriculture has ceased. Yet the mechanisms for legacy effects, such as altered plant community composition, are not well understood. In particular, whether plant community recovery is limited by an inability of populations to establish within post-agricultural areas, owing to altered environmental conditions within these areas, remains poorly known.

The ecological importance of intraspecific variation.

Human activity is causing wild populations to experience rapid trait change and local extirpation. The resulting effects on intraspecific variation could have substantial consequences for ecological processes and ecosystem services. Although researchers have long acknowledged that variation among species influences the surrounding environment, only recently has evidence accumulated for the ecological importance of variation within species.

Agricultural land-use history causes persistent loss of plant phylogenetic diversity.

Intensive land use activities, such as agriculture, are a leading cause of biodiversity loss and can have lasting impacts on ecological systems. Yet, few studies have investigated how land-use legacies impact phylogenetic diversity (the total amount of evolutionary history in a community) or how restoration activities might mitigate legacy effects on biodiversity. We studied ground-layer plant communities in 27 pairs of Remnant (no agricultural history) and Post-agricultural (agriculture abandoned >60 yr ago) longleaf pine savannas, half of which we restored by thinning trees to reinstate open savanna conditions.

Plant domestication slows pest evolution.

Agricultural practices such as breeding resistant varieties and pesticide use can cause rapid evolution of pest species, but it remains unknown how plant domestication itself impacts pest contemporary evolution. Using experimental evolution on a comparative phylogenetic scale, we compared the evolutionary dynamics of a globally important economic pest - the green peach aphid (Myzus persicae) - growing on 34 plant taxa, represented by 17 crop species and their wild relatives. Domestication slowed aphid evolution by 13.

Ecological effects of aphid abundance, genotypic variation, and contemporary evolution on plants.

Genetic variation and contemporary evolution within populations can shape the strength and nature of species interactions, but the relative importance of these forces compared to other ecological factors is unclear. We conducted a field experiment testing the effects of genotypic variation, abundance, and presence/absence of green peach aphids (Myzus persicae) on the growth, leaf nitrogen, and carbon of two plant species (Brassica napus and Solanum nigrum). Aphid genotype affected B.

The impact of domestication on resistance to two generalist herbivores across 29 independent domestication events.

The domestication of crops is among the most important innovations in human history. Here, we test the hypothesis that cultivation and artificial selection for increased productivity of crops reduced plant defenses against herbivores. We compared the performance of two economically important generalist herbivores - the leaf-chewing beet armyworm (Spodoptera exigua) and the phloem-feeding green peach aphid (Myzus persicae) - across 29 crop species and their closely related wild relatives.

Contemporary evolution of plant growth rate following experimental removal of herbivores.

Herbivores are credited with driving the evolutionary diversification of plant defensive strategies over macroevolutionary time. For this to be true, herbivores must also cause short-term evolution within plant populations, but few studies have experimentally tested this prediction. We addressed this gap using a long-term manipulative field experiment where exclosures protected 22 plant populations from natural rabbit herbivory for <1 to 26 years.

Habitat patch shape, not corridors, determines herbivory and fruit production of an annual plant.

Habitat corridors confer many conservation benefits by increasing movement of organisms between habitat patches, but the benefits for some species may exact costs for others. For example, corridors may increase the abundance of consumers in a habitat to the detriment of the species they consume. In this study we assessed the impact of corridors on insect herbivory of a native plant, Solanum americanum, in large-scale, experimentally fragmented landscapes.

Community genetics: what have we accomplished and where should we be going?

Research in community genetics seeks to understand how the dynamic interplay between ecology and evolution shapes simple and complex communities and ecosystems. A community genetics perspective, however, may not be necessary or informative for all studies and systems. To better understand when and how intraspecific genetic variation and microevolution are important in community and ecosystem ecology, we suggest future research should focus on three areas: (i) determining the relative importance of intraspecific genetic variation compared with other ecological factors in mediating community and ecosystem properties; (ii) understanding the importance of microevolution in shaping ecological dynamics in multi-trophic communities; and (iii) deciphering the phenotypic and associated genetic mechanisms that drive community and ecosystem processes.