Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia; Department of Vector Biology, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Pembroke Place L3 5QA, UK.
School of Environment and life Sciences, University of Salford, Manchester M5 4WT, UK.
J Invertebr Pathol. 2021 Nov;186:107670. doi: 10.1016/j.jip.2021.107670. Epub 2021 Sep 22.
Island ecosystems, which often contain undescribed insects and small populations of single island endemics, are at risk from diverse threats. The spread of pathogens is a major factor affecting not just pollinator species themselves, but also posing significant knock-on effects to often fragile island ecosystems through disruption of pollination networks. Insects are vulnerable to diverse pathogens and these can be introduced to islands in a number of ways, e.g. via the introduction of infected managed pollinator hosts (e.g. honey bees and their viruses, in particular Deformed wing virus), long-range migrants (e.g. monarch butterflies and their protozoan parasite, Ophryocystit elektroscirrha) and invasive species (e.g. social wasps are common invaders and are frequently infected with multi-host viruses such as Kashmir bee virus and Moku virus). Furthermore, these introductions can negatively affect island ecosystems through outcompeting native taxa for resources. As such, the greatest threat to island pollinator communities is not one particular pathogen, but the combination of pathogens and introduced and invasive insects that will likely carry them.
岛屿生态系统通常包含未被描述的昆虫和单一岛屿特有物种的小种群，它们面临着多种威胁。病原体的传播不仅对传粉者物种本身构成重大影响，而且还会通过破坏授粉网络，对常常脆弱的岛屿生态系统产生重大的连锁效应。昆虫易受多种病原体的侵害，这些病原体可以通过多种方式引入岛屿，例如通过引入受感染的管理传粉者宿主（例如蜜蜂及其病毒，特别是变形翅病毒）、远距离迁徙者（例如帝王蝶及其原生动物寄生虫，电棘虫）和入侵物种（例如社会性黄蜂是常见的入侵物种，经常感染多种宿主病毒，如克什米尔蜜蜂病毒和莫库病毒）。此外，这些引入可能会通过与本地分类群竞争资源，对岛屿生态系统产生负面影响。因此，对岛屿传粉者群落的最大威胁不是某种特定的病原体，而是可能携带它们的病原体以及引入和入侵昆虫的组合。
