ArcticBuzz: bumblebee community responses to climate change in Lapland

昆虫传粉者的减少是全球关注的问题，了解推动这一趋势的因素是研究的重点。然而，到目前为止，我们对气候变化如何影响昆虫传粉者种群的了解仍然有限。例如，为什么一些物种在对气候变化的明显反应中表现出纬度范围变化的证据，而其他物种则没有呢？解决这类问题需要我们了解昆虫传粉者种群动态反应的机制和过程，以及植物传粉者网络结构如何在气候变化下做出反应。这个项目将研究一个北极大黄蜂群落和他们访问的瑞典拉普兰的寄主植物。作为外温动物，大黄蜂的生活史受温度的影响，因此，通过了解年内和年际种群和群落周转，我们可以期待在变暖情景下为预测模型提供信息，并识别气候变化影响的早期预警信号。此外，该项目将揭示大黄蜂-植物访问网络中的时空变化(非静态)，以揭示互利互动网络对气候变化的抵抗力和恢复力。该项目利用了一个多世纪前建立的独特的物候样带，使我们能够将过去关于大黄蜂/植物群落组成和物候的数据与跨越过去40年主要变暖的当代数据进行比较。样带沿着阿比斯科诺尔贾山的海拔梯度运行，为研究提供了一个温跃层，研究采用了空间换时间的方法。学生将讨论一些重要的问题，其中包括：i)以前和当前的环境变量如何决定种群人口和蜂王更替；ii)多年来什么物候变化是明显的，这与种群和社区层面的反应是如何联系的；iii)气候变化如何决定大黄蜂的花卉可获得性和花卉获取，是否有证据表明热跟踪；iv)互惠网络的拓扑和结构如何响应气候变化；v)种群聚合体个体特征的种群变异性如何决定网络结构；Vi)我们是否可以通过考虑跨物种的新陈代谢、系统发育和功能特征变异的数据来预测互惠网络的非随机变化。

Insect pollinator declines are of global concern and understanding the factors driving this trend is a research priority. Yet to date, we still have limited knowledge of how climate change can affect insect pollinator populations. For instance, why have some species shown evidence of latitudinal range shifts in apparent response to climate change when others have not? Addressing these types of questions requires us to understand the mechanisms and processes by which insect pollinator populations are dynamically responding as well as how the structure of plant-pollinator networks respond under climatic variation. This project will study an Arctic bumblebee community and the host plants they visit in Lapland, Sweden. As ectotherms, bumblebee life-histories are mediated by temperature and thus by understanding intra- and interannual population and community turnover we can look to inform predictive models under warming scenarios and identify early warning signs of climate change impacts. Furthermore, this project will reveal the spatio-temporal variation (non-static) in the bumblebee-plant visitation network to reveal how resistant and resilient the mutualistic interaction network is to climate change. The project takes advantage of a unique phenology transect established over a century ago allowing us to compare past data on bumblebee/plant community composition and phenology with contemporary data spanning the major warming over the last four decades. The transect runs along an altitudinal gradient on Mount Nuolja, Abisko, providing a thermal cline with the study taking a space-for-time substitution approach. A number of important questions will be addressed by the student, which can include: i) how preceding and current environmental variables determine population demography and queen turnover; ii) what phenological variation is apparent across years, and how this relates to population and community-level responses; iii) how climatic variation determines floral availability and floral acquisition by bumblebees and whether there is evidence of thermal tracking; iv) how the topology and structure of the mutualistic network responds to climatic variation; v) how population variability in the traits of individuals of a species aggregate determines network structure ; vi) whether we can predict non-random changes to the mutualistic networks by consideration of data on metabolic, phylogenetic and functional trait variation across species.