The impacts of multiple environmental stressors on native bee populations

多种环境压力因素对本地蜜蜂种群的影响

• 批准号: RGPIN-2015-06783
• 负责人: Raine, Nigel
• 金额: $ 2.33万
• 依托单位: University of Guelph
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2016-01-01 至 2017-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=614362
• 关键词: impacts; multiple; environmental; stressors; native

Bees are essential to food production and maintaining healthy and diverse wild plants. Their pollination services are responsible for 35% of global crop production worth at least $240 Billion CAD per year. The bad news is that bees are struggling and we urgently need to understand the causes of global declines before the pollination services they provide fail to meet our food production needs. Current thinking is that bee declines are the result of many individual factors combining to place them under great stress. Unlike managed honeybees, Canada’s 800+ native bee species provide their crop pollination services free of charge, however much less is known about how they respond to environmental stress. My research program will assess the impacts of a range of environmental stress factors on native bees, their colonies and populations. Critically it will also consider the combined impacts of stressors, such as habitat loss, disease, pesticides and poor nutrition. Using a series of laboratory and field studies we will determine the impacts of field relevant levels of exposure to each of these stressors individually for both bumblebees and solitary bees. We will examine the impacts of each stressor on important individual behaviours, such as foraging, learning and navigation, and the subsequent effects of individual behavioural impairment directly on the reproductive success of solitary bees, and indirectly on bumblebee colony reproduction mediated by reduced colony growth. Having established the relative importance of these stressors we will assess their impacts in pairwise and three-way combinations. A key question is whether effects of each stressor pile up (additive effect), or whether the effects of combined exposure are much greater than the sum of both parts (synergistic effect). Learning and memory are critical mechanisms allowing animals to adapt to environmental change during their lifetime. We will test how useful variation in learning and memory is for bee colonies to survive in environments with different levels of stress. If flowers are harder to find are faster learning bees at an advantage, and can they produce more offspring? Learning also plays a central role in bee navigation. Using cutting edge radio tag technology we will track bees as they forage and disperse across a range of landscapes to assess how they respond to increasingly fragmented patches of suitable habitat along gradients of agricultural and urban intensification. An important conservation question is whether solitary bees are more sensitive to environmental stress than social bees. Does the social organization of a colony provide a buffer for bumblebee and honeybees against environmental stress? In addition to delivering scientific excellence with substantial contributions to the advancement of knowledge, this research has direct policy relevance for environmental, conservation and agricultural issues.

蜜蜂对食物生产和维持健康和多样化的野生植物至关重要。他们的授粉服务占全球农作物产量的35%，每年价值至少2400亿加元。坏消息是，蜜蜂正在苦苦挣扎，我们迫切需要在它们提供的授粉服务无法满足我们的粮食生产需求之前了解全球下降的原因。目前的想法是，蜜蜂数量的下降是许多个体因素结合在一起，使它们处于巨大压力下的结果。与管理的蜜蜂不同，加拿大的800多种本土蜜蜂免费提供作物授粉服务，但对它们如何应对环境压力的了解要少得多。我的研究计划将评估一系列环境压力因素对本土蜜蜂，它们的殖民地和种群的影响。至关重要的是，它还将考虑栖息地丧失、疾病、农药和营养不良等压力因素的综合影响。使用一系列的实验室和现场研究，我们将确定现场相关的暴露水平，这些压力分别为熊蜂和孤独的蜜蜂的影响。我们将研究每个压力源对重要的个人行为，如觅食，学习和导航的影响，以及随后的影响，个人行为障碍直接对独居蜜蜂的繁殖成功，间接对大黄蜂群体繁殖介导的减少殖民地的增长。在确定了这些压力源的相对重要性之后，我们将评估它们在成对和三向组合中的影响。一个关键的问题是，是否每个压力源的影响堆积（累加效应），或者组合暴露的影响是否远远大于两个部分的总和（协同效应）。学习和记忆是动物在其一生中适应环境变化的关键机制。我们将测试学习和记忆的变化对蜂群在不同压力水平的环境中生存有多有用。如果花朵更难找到，蜜蜂学习更快，它们能产生更多的后代吗？学习在蜜蜂导航中也起着核心作用。利用最先进的无线电标签技术，我们将跟踪蜜蜂，因为他们的饲料和分散在一系列的景观，以评估他们如何应对日益分散的补丁，适合栖息地沿着梯度的农业和城市集约化。一个重要的保护问题是独居蜜蜂是否比社会蜜蜂对环境压力更敏感。蜂群的社会组织是否为大黄蜂和蜜蜂提供了抵御环境压力的缓冲？除了提供卓越的科学成果，为知识的进步做出重大贡献外，这项研究对环境，保护和农业问题具有直接的政策意义。