Increasing flower species richness in agricultural landscapes alters insect pollinator networks: Implications for bee health and competition.

Ecological restoration programs are established to reverse land degradation, mitigate biodiversity loss, and reinstate ecosystem services. Following recent agricultural intensification that led to a decrease in flower diversity and density in rural areas and subsequently to the decline of many insects, conservation measures targeted at pollinators have been established, including sown wildflower strips (WFS) along field margins. Historically successful in establishing a high density of generalist bees and increasing pollinator diversity, the impact of enhanced flower provision on wider ecological interactions and the structure of pollinator networks has been rarely investigated.

Long-term effects of antibiotic treatments on honeybee colony fitness: A modelling approach.

Gut microbiome disequilibrium is increasingly implicated in host fitness reductions, including for the economically important and disease-challenged western honey bee . In laboratory experiments, the antibiotic tetracycline, which is used to prevent American Foulbrood Disease in countries including the US, elevates honey bee mortality by disturbing the microbiome. It is unclear, however, how elevated individual mortality affects colony-level fitness.

Mechanisms governing avian phylosymbiosis: Genetic dissimilarity based on neutral and MHC regions exhibits little relationship with gut microbiome distributions of Galápagos mockingbirds.

The gut microbiome of animals, which serves important functions but can also contain potential pathogens, is to varying degrees under host genetic control. This can generate signals of phylosymbiosis, whereby gut microbiome composition matches host phylogenetic structure. However, the genetic mechanisms that generate phylosymbiosis and the scale at which they act remain unclear.

Jumping the green wall: The use of PNA-DNA clamps to enhance microbiome sampling depth in wildlife microbiome research.

As microbiome research moves away from model organisms to wildlife, new challenges for microbiome high-throughput sequencing arise caused by the variety of wildlife diets. High levels of contamination are commonly observed emanating from the host (mitochondria) or diet (chloroplast). Such high contamination levels affect the overall sequencing depth of wildlife samples thus decreasing statistical power and leading to poor performance in downstream analysis.

Industrial bees: The impact of apicultural intensification on local disease prevalence.

It is generally thought that the intensification of farming will result in higher disease prevalences, although there is little specific modelling testing this idea. Focussing on honeybees, we build multi-colony models to inform how "apicultural intensification" is predicted to impact honeybee pathogen epidemiology at the apiary scale.We used both agent-based and analytical models to show that three linked aspects of apicultural intensification (increased population sizes, changes in population network structure and increased between-colony transmission) are unlikely to greatly increase disease prevalence in apiaries.

Challenges of next-generation sequencing in conservation management: Insights from long-term monitoring of corridor effects on the genetic diversity of mouse lemurs in a fragmented landscape.

Long-term genetic monitoring of populations is essential for efforts aimed at preserving genetic diversity of endangered species. Here, we employ a framework of long-term genetic monitoring to evaluate the effects of fragmentation and the effectiveness of the establishment of corridors in restoring population connectivity and genetic diversity of mouse lemurs . To this end, we supplement estimates of neutral genetic diversity with the assessment of adaptive genetic variability of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC).

The effect of temperature on male mating signals and female choice in the red mason bee, (L.).

Climate change and the resulting changes in air temperature are known to have a major influence on most animals, especially poikilothermic insects, because they depend on the high enough temperatures to function. Previous studies have shown that various signals can be affected by changes in temperature. However, research into the effect of temperature on mating signals and subsequently communication between mates and on female choice is still rare.