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. 2023 Oct 21;13(1):18016.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-44822-z.

The value of twinned pollinator-pollen metabarcoding: bumblebee pollination service is weakly partitioned within a UK grassland community

Sandra Ronca  1 , Caroline S Ford  2 , Joël Allanguillaume  3 , Claudia Szabo  4 , Richard Kipling  5 , Mike J Wilkinson  6
Affiliations

The value of twinned pollinator-pollen metabarcoding: bumblebee pollination service is weakly partitioned within a UK grassland community

Sandra Ronca et al. Sci Rep. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Predicting ecological impact of declining bumblebee (Bombus) populations requires better understanding of interactions between pollinator partitioning of floral resources and plant partitioning of pollinator resources. Here, we combine Cytochrome Oxidase 1 (CO1) barcoding for bumblebee identification and rbcL metabarcoding of pollen carried by bees in three species-rich UK pastures. CO1 barcoding assigned 272 bees to eight species, with 33 individuals belonging to the cryptic Bombus lucorum complex (16 B. lucorum and 17 B. cryptarum). Seasonal bias in capture rates varied by species, with B. pratorum found exclusively in June/July and B. pascuorum more abundant in August. Pollen metabarcoding coupled with PERMANOVA and NMDS analyses revealed all bees carried several local pollen species and evidence of pollen resource partitioning between some species pairings, with Bombus pratorum carrying the most divergent pollen load. There was no evidence of resource partitioning between the two cryptic species present, but significantly divergent capture rates concorded with previous suggestions of separation on the basis of foraging behaviour being shaped by local/temporal differences in climatic conditions. Considering the bee carriage profile of pollen species revealed no significant difference between the nine most widely carried plant species. However, there was a sharp, tipping point change in community pollen carriage across all three sites that occurred during the transition between late July and early August. This transition resulted in a strong divergence in community pollen carriage between the two seasonal periods in both years. We conclude that the combined use of pollen and bee barcoding offers several benefits for further study of plant-pollinator interactions at the landscape scale.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Neighbour Joining tree showing variation in Cytochrome Oxidase 1 (CO1) reference barcode sequences for eight Bombus species retrieved from the BOLD Systems V4 database and query CO1 sequences from bees captured at the study sites. Reference barcodes are shown with their BOLD Systems 4 identification code along with query bee barcodes (indicated by the diagnostic bee code number). For simplicity, query bee barcodes with identical sequences are not shown.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) plots of bumblebee pollen carriage. NMDS plots comparing rbcL metabarcoding pollen carriage profiles (pollen types above 5% threshold) from Bombus species pairs with divergent profiles (Permanova, p < 0.05). (A). B. cryptarum and B. pratorum. Stress test = 0.13. (B) B. hortorum and B. lapidarius. Stress test = 0.146. (C) B. hortorum and B. pratorum. Stress test = 0.16. (D) B. lapidarius and B. cryptarum. Stress test = 0.138. (E) B. lapidarius and B. pratorum. Stress test = 0.0948. (F) B. lucorum and B. lapidarius. Stress test = 0.106 . (G) B. pascuorum and B. pratorum. Stress test = 0.199.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) plots of site-specific bumblebee pollen carriage. NMDS plots of species pairings in (A) Rhos Fullbrook, RF. B. pascuorum and B. cryptarum. Stress test = 0.115. (B) Rhos Glandenys, RG. i. B. hortorum and B. pratorum. Stress test = 0.117. ii. B. pascuorum and B. pratorum. Stress test = 0.189. iii. B. pascuorum and B. terrestris. Stress test = 0.154. (C) Rhos Glyn yr Helyg, RGYH. i. B. lucorum and B. lapidarius. Stress test = 0.083. ii. B. lucorum and B. pascuorum. Stress test = 0.143. iii. B. lapidarius and B. pascuorum. Stress test = 0.137. iv. B. lapidarius and B. pratorum. Stress test = 0.185. v. B. pascuorum and B. terrestris. Stress test = 0.153.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) plots of seasonal changes to bumblebee pollen carriage. NMDS plots comparing rbcL metabarcoding pollen carriage profiles (pollen types above 5% threshold) on all Bombus species captured in (A) June (dots) and early August (filled triangles). Stress test = 0.19. (B) June (dots) and late August (open triangles) Stress test = 0.2. (C) July (open circles) and early August (filled triangles). Stress test = 0.17 (D) July (open circles) and late August (open triangles). Stress test = 0.17.
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