Journal Club Article for June 21, 2021

On Mon­day, June 21, 2021, from 10–11 AM (EST/EDT), we will dis­cuss the linked arti­cle at our next week­ly Jour­nal Club meet­ing. The arti­cle is titled “Nar­row habi­tat breadth and late-sum­mer emer­gence increas­es extinc­tion vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty in Cen­tral Euro­pean bees” and will be pre­sent­ed by STEM Research Intern Kehinde Agbeleye.

Abstract: Eval­u­at­ing intrin­sic and extrin­sic traits that pre­dis­pose species to local extinc­tion is impor­tant for tar­get­ing con­ser­va­tion efforts. Among the species of spe­cial con­cern in Europe are bees, which, along with but­ter­flies, are the best mon­i­tored insects. Bees are most species-rich in Mediter­ranean-type cli­mates with short win­ters, warm springs, and dry sum­mers. In Cen­tral Europe, cli­mate warm­ing per se is, there­fore, expect­ed to ben­e­fit most bee species, while pes­ti­cides and the loss of habi­tats and plant diver­si­ty should con­sti­tute threats. Here, we use the bee fau­na of Ger­many, which has been mon­i­tored for Red Lists for over 40 years, to analyse the effects of habi­tat breadth, pollen spe­cial­iza­tion, body size, nest­ing sites, social­i­ty, dura­tion of flight activ­i­ty, and time of emer­gence dur­ing the sea­son. We test­ed each fac­tor’s pre­dic­tive pow­er against changes in com­mon­ness and Red List sta­tus, using phy­lo­ge­net­i­cal­ly informed hier­ar­chi­cal Bayesian (HB) mod­els. Extinc­tion vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty is strong­ly increased in bees fly­ing in late sum­mer, with a sta­tis­ti­cal mod­el that includ­ed flight time, habi­tat pref­er­ence, and dura­tion of activ­i­ty cor­rect­ly pre­dict­ing the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty sta­tus of 85% of the species. Con­verse­ly, spring emer­gence and occur­rence in urban areas each reduce vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, point­ing to inten­sive land use espe­cial­ly harm­ing sum­mer-active bees, with the com­bi­na­tion of these fac­tors cur­rent­ly shift­ing Ger­many’s bee diver­si­ty towards warm-adapt­ed, spring-fly­ing, city-dwelling species.

https://massasoit.zoom.us/my/stemresearch

Meet­ing ID: 549 554 5262

Mas­sas­oit STEM events are open to ALL Mas­sas­oit stu­dents, fac­ul­ty, and staff.

Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege encour­ages per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties to par­tic­i­pate in its pro­grams and activ­i­ties. If you antic­i­pate need­ing any type of accom­mo­da­tion or have ques­tions relat­ed to access for this event, please con­tact the Divi­sion of Sci­ence and Math­e­mat­ics at sciencemath@massasoit.edu in advance of your par­tic­i­pa­tion or vis­it.

Pho­to by Mike Ersk­ine on Unsplash