Tracking pollinator movements and resource use in response to environmental stressors at a landscape scale

跟踪传粉媒介的移动和资源利用，以应对景观尺度的环境压力

• 批准号: RGPIN-2021-04210
• 负责人: Raine, Nigel
• 金额: $ 2.91万
• 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: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=753369
• 关键词: Tracking; pollinator; movements; resource; use

Bees play a critical role in food production and facilitating reproduction of wild flowering plants. In Canada, bumblebees emerge in spring and are often seen buzzing around farms visiting the blooms of fruit and vegetable crops. Like other bees, bumblebees also seem to be struggling in human influenced landscapes. Loss and fragmentation of important habitat for food and nesting sites, greater pesticide exposure, higher risks from parasites/pathogens and climate change are all challenges for wild bees, and these factors may be more harmful when acting together. Although bumblebees are perhaps the most apparent and best studied of Canada's wild bees, there are still big gaps in our understanding of their basic ecology that we need to fill in order to conserve these pollinators more effectively. Bumblebee queens in particular are poorly studied so we have little idea of how far they travel after emerging from hibernation underground to find food and possible nest sites where they can start their own colony. Similarly estimates of the dispersal distances of newly emerged virgin queens in late summer vary hugely at a time they must find a mate and then a safe place to bury themselves to survive the cold winter in hibernation. We will set out to fill these important knowledge gaps using a unique radio tracking array with 49 receiver towers to automatically follow the movements of tagged bumblebees in real time. We will also examine spatial foraging patterns of bumblebee workers on bee attractive field crops (e.g. blueberry) and see how these are governed by the distribution and availability of habitat in the farmed landscape. We will also investigate the potential sublethal effects of exposure to field realistic levels of pesticides on the behaviour of radio-tagged queens and workers. Particularly for queens even a subtle change from normal behaviour could have a profound effect on her success at finding a nest site or raising a colony. Robust estimates on the rate of bumblebees surviving winter will be collected by allowing many fall queens to bury themselves in flight enclosures into which survivors will emerge again in spring. Tracking the genetic relatedness among workers will also inform our understanding of annual fluctuations in local population structure. A key aim of this program is to bring together all these new data on key life history transitions to build an ecologically realistic demographic model for the bumblebee colony lifecycle. Such a ground-truthed model will allow us to better understand the ways in which environmental stressors perturb colony success by affecting individual bee physiology and behaviour, particularly if this is the queen. Building a complete understanding of the key habitat requirements for different bumblebee species to live and thrive gives us wider insights into bee biology and also increases our ability to provide targeted advice and action to conserve bumblebees as essential pollinators.

蜜蜂在食物生产和促进野生开花植物繁殖方面发挥着关键作用。在加拿大，大黄蜂在春天出现，经常被看到在农场周围嗡嗡作响，参观水果和蔬菜作物的开花。像其他蜜蜂一样，大黄蜂似乎也在人类影响的环境中挣扎。对于野生蜜蜂来说，重要的食物和筑巢地点栖息地的丧失和碎片化、更大的杀虫剂暴露、寄生虫/病原体的更高风险以及气候变化都是挑战，当这些因素共同作用时，可能会更有害。尽管大黄蜂可能是加拿大野生蜜蜂中最明显、研究最深入的一种，但我们对其基本生态的了解仍有很大差距，我们需要填补这些空白，以便更有效地保护这些传粉者。尤其是对大黄蜂女王的研究很少，所以我们几乎不知道它们从地下冬眠中出来后会走多远去寻找食物和可能的筑巢地点，在那里它们可以建立自己的殖民地。同样，新出现的处女王后在夏末的分散距离估计也有很大差异，因为它们必须找到配偶，然后找到一个安全的地方埋葬自己，以便在寒冷的冬季冬眠。我们将着手利用一种独特的无线电跟踪阵列来填补这些重要的知识空白，该阵列带有49个接收塔，可以自动实时跟踪标记的大黄蜂的行动。我们还将研究大黄蜂工蜂在诱人的大田作物(如蓝莓)上的空间觅食模式，并了解这些模式如何受到养殖景观中栖息地的分布和可用性的影响。我们还将调查暴露于田间实际水平的杀虫剂对无线电标记的蜂王和工蚁行为的潜在亚致命影响。特别是对于蜂王来说，即使是与正常行为的细微变化都可能对它成功找到筑巢地点或培育蜂群产生深远的影响。通过允许许多秋季蜂后将自己埋葬在飞行围栏中，幸存者将在春季再次出现，这将收集对大黄蜂过冬比率的强劲估计。追踪工人之间的遗传联系也将有助于我们了解当地人口结构的年度波动。该计划的一个关键目标是将所有这些关于关键生活史转变的新数据汇集在一起，为大黄蜂群体的生命周期建立一个生态现实的人口统计模型。这样一个真实的模型将让我们更好地理解环境压力如何通过影响个体蜜蜂的生理和行为来扰乱群体的成功，特别是如果这是蜂王的话。全面了解不同种类大黄蜂生存和繁衍的关键栖息地要求，使我们对蜜蜂生物学有更广泛的了解，并提高我们提供有针对性的建议和行动的能力，以保护大黄蜂作为重要的传粉者。