Laboratory of Zoology, Research Institute for Biosciences, University of Mons, Place du Parc 23, 7000, Mons, Belgium.
Evo-Eco-Paleo - UMR 8198, CNRS, Université de Lille, F-59000, Lille, France.
Sci Rep. 2019 Aug 29;9(1):12596. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-49025-z.
Pollinators are experiencing declines globally, negatively affecting the reproduction of wild plants and crop production. Well-known drivers of these declines include climatic and nutritional stresses, such as a change of dietary resources due to the degradation of habitat quality. Understanding potential synergies between these two important drivers is needed to improve predictive models of the future effects of climate change on pollinator declines. Here, bumblebee colony bioassays were used to evaluate the interactive effects of heat stress, a reduction of dietary resource quality, and colony size. Using a total of 117 colonies, we applied a fully crossed experiment to test the effect of three dietary quality levels under three levels of heat stress with two colony sizes. Both nutritional and heat stress reduced colony development resulting in a lower investment in offspring production. Small colonies were much more sensitive to heat and nutritional stresses than large ones, possibly because a higher percentage of workers helps maintain social homeostasis. Strikingly, the effects of heat stress were far less pronounced for small colonies fed with suitable diets. Overall, our study suggests that landscape management actions that ensure access to high-quality resources could reduce the impacts of heat stress on bee decline.
传粉媒介在全球范围内数量减少，这对野生植物的繁殖和作物生产产生了负面影响。这些减少的主要原因包括气候和营养压力，例如由于栖息地质量下降导致的饮食资源变化。为了提高预测气候变化对传粉媒介减少的未来影响的模型，需要了解这两个重要驱动因素之间的潜在协同作用。在这里，使用熊蜂种群生物测定法来评估热应激、饮食资源质量降低和种群规模之间的相互作用。使用总共 117 个种群，我们应用完全交叉实验来测试在三种热应激水平下三种饮食质量水平对两种种群规模的影响。营养和热应激都会降低种群的发展，从而减少对后代生产的投资。与大型种群相比，小型种群对热和营养压力更为敏感，这可能是因为较高比例的工蜂有助于维持社会平衡。引人注目的是，对于喂食合适饮食的小型种群，热应激的影响要小得多。总的来说，我们的研究表明，确保获得高质量资源的景观管理措施可以减少热应激对蜜蜂减少的影响。
