Birgit Jauker

Contrasting effects of mass-flowering crops on bee pollination of hedge plants at different spatial and temporal scales

Landscape-wide mass-flowering of oilseed rape (canola Brassica napus) can considerably affect wild bee communities and pollination success of wild plants. We aimed to assess the impact of oilseed rape on the pollination of wild plants and bee abundance during and after oilseed-rape bloom, including effects on crop-noncrop spillover at landscape and adjacent-field scales. We focused on two shrub species (hawthorn Crataegus spp., dog rose Rosa canina) and adjacent herb flowering in forest edges, connected hedges, and isolated hedges in Lower Saxony, Germany. We selected 35 landscape circles of 1 km radius, differing in the amount of oilseed rape; 18 were adjacent to oilseed rape and 17 to cereal fields, and we quantified bee density via pan traps at all sites. Adjacent oilseed rape positively affected fruit mass and seed number per fruit of simultaneously flowering hawthorn (no effect on dog rose, which flowers after the oilseed rape bloom). At the landscape scale, oilseed rape had a negative effect on bumble bee density in the hedges during flowering due to dilution of pollinators per unit area and the consequently intensified competition between oilseed rape and wild shrubs, but a positive effect after flowering when bees moved to the hedges, which still provided resources. In contrast, positive landscape-scale effects of oilseed rape were found throughout the season in forest edges, suggesting that edges support nesting activity and enhanced food resources. Our results show that oilseed rape effects on bee abundances and pollination success in seminatural habitats depend on the spatial and temporal scale considered and on the habitat type, the wild plant species, and the time of crop flowering. These scale-dependent positive and negative effects should be considered in evaluations of landscape-scale configuration and composition of crops. Food resources provided by mass-flowering crops should be most beneficial for landscape-wide enhancement of wild bee populations if seminatural habitats are available, providing (1) nesting resources and (2) continuous flowering resources during the season.

Linking life history traits to pollinator loss in fragmented calcareous grasslands

To gain insight into the drivers of pollinator loss, a holistic approach to land-use change including habitat size, isolation, habitat quality and the surrounding landscape matrix is necessary. Moreover, species’ responses to land-use change may differ depending on their life history traits such as dispersal ability, trophic level, or sociality. We assessed species richness and life history traits of wild bees in 32 calcareous grasslands in central Germany that differ in size, connectivity, resource availability and landscape context. Declining habitat area and, to a lesser degree, reduced diversity of the surrounding landscape were the key factors negatively influencing species richness. In the community-wide analysis, small body size and solitary reproduction were traits that made species particularly vulnerable to habitat loss. Contrary to our expectations, cleptoparasitic species were not more affected by reduced habitat area and landscape diversity than nest-building species. We performed further detailed trait analyses within the family Halictidae to prevent possible confounding effects due to trait correlations across families. Here, social as opposed to solitary species were more affected by habitat loss. We conclude that the opposite pattern observed for all social bees was mainly caused by large-sized social bumblebee species with high mobility and large foraging distances. Our results demonstrate the risks of concealed trait interference when analyzing community-wide patterns of life history traits. As a consequence, conservation requirements of small social bee species might be overlooked by generalizations from community responses.

Landscape configuration of crops and hedgerows drives local syrphid fly abundance

Summary 1. Human-dominated landscapes are characterized by a mosaic of natural and managed eco- systems, affecting arthropod communities on different spatial scales. Effective landscape man- agement for functionally important organisms suffers from little understanding of organism spillover between semi-natural habitats and adjacent crops, and of how it is affected by the surrounding landscape. 2. We examined syrphid abundance (Diptera: Syrphidae) in three types of linear semi-natural habitats, differing in connectedness to annual crops and forest [forest edges ( n = 12), forest- connected hedges ( n = 11) and isolated hedges ( n = 12)], as well as in the adjacent oilseed rape or winter wheat fields (i.e. altogether n = 70 sites in 35 landscapes). The landscape cir- cles with 1 km radius around the study sites differed in the proportion of oilseed rape (rang- ing from 0% to 35% oilseed rape) enabling us to test landscape-scale effects of oilseed rape. 3. Aphidophagous syrphids were more abundant in forest-connected hedgerows than in for- est edges (with isolated hedges being intermediate), and more abundant in crop fields adjacent to hedgerows than adjacent to forest edges, indicating spillover from semi-natural habitats to the adjacent crop fields. Aphidophagous syrphid abundance was higher in semi-natural habi- tats adjacent to oilseed rape fields than adjacent to wheat fields if the proportion of oilseed rape in the landscape was low (indicating local concentration). 4. Synthesis and applications. This study highlights the potential of hedgerows to enhance the abundances of beneficial syrphids and their spillover to adjacent crop fields, especially when they are connected with forests. We provide evidence that this local exchange is moderated by the extent of mass-flowering crops in the surrounding landscapes due to local concentration. There- fore, measurements for the improvement in local biological functioni ng should be evaluated by simultaneously investigating local and regio nal aspects of crop configurations to allow for region-specific management recommendations. Increasing the total amount of hedgerows in the agricultural matrix under moderate landscape- scale proportions of mass-flowering crops may serve best for the conservation of biodiversity and augmentation of i mportant ecosystem services such as biological control and pollination in lands capes dominated by agricultural cultivations.

GIEßEN: University Collections: Justus Liebig University Gießen

The collection of the Department of Animal Ecology and Systematics at the Justus Liebig University Giesen comprises a broad range of invertebrates and vertebrates, skulls, eggs, bird nests, and genetic resources. In total, more than half a million specimens of organismic samples and more than 20,000 specimens of genetic samples are stocked. The collection is complemented by anatomic maps and models. As the Justus Liebig University strongly emphasizes organismic aspects of academic training in biology, a large part of the collection is regularly used for teaching Germany’s native fauna. For example, approximately 5000 invertebrates out of 90 taxa are used for mandatory courses on taxonomic identification. The collection also contains voucher specimens of scientific studies and research projects of the past decades. A collection’s highlight is the material sampled for the faunistic inventory of the Hoher Vogelsberg area in Hesse, which is part of the largest volcanic region in Europe. Another highlight is one of the largest DNA reference collections for worldwide freshwater mollusks. It is on of the most complete wet collections of macrozoobenthic taxa of worldwide ancient lakes, i.e. extant lakes orders of magnitudes older than most lakes on earth. This part of the collection is also a valuable DNA reference collection for some poorly studied regions such as the Tibetan Plateau.

Past and potential future effects of habitat fragmentation on structure and stability of plant–pollinator and host–parasitoid networks

Habitat fragmentation is a primary threat to biodiversity, but how it affects the structure and stability of ecological networks is poorly understood. Here, we studied plant–pollinator and host–parasitoid networks on 32 calcareous grassland fragments covering a size gradient of several orders of magnitude and with amounts of additional habitat availability in the surrounding landscape that varied independent of fragment size. We find that additive and interactive effects of habitat fragmentation at local (fragment size) and landscape scales (1,750 m radius) directly shape species communities by altering the number of interacting species and, indirectly, their body size composition. These, in turn, affect plant–pollinator, but not host–parasitoid, network structure: the nestedness and modularity of plant–pollinator networks increase with pollinator body size. Moreover, pollinator richness increases modularity. In contrast, the modularity of host–parasitoid networks decreases with host richness, whereas neither parasitoid richness nor body size affects network structure. Simulating species coextinctions also reveals that the structure–stability relationship depends on species’ sensitivity to coextinctions and their capacity for adaptive partner switches, which differ between mutualistic and antagonistic interaction partners. While plant–pollinator communities may cope with future habitat fragmentation by responding to species loss with opportunistic partner switches, past effects of fragmentation on the current structure of host–parasitoid networks may strongly affect their robustness to coextinctions under future habitat fragmentation.Analysing the structure of both plant–pollinator and host–parasitoid networks in calcareous grasslands, the authors reveal scale-dependent responses to habitat fragmentation in the structure and stability of different network types.