The role of seasonality in shaping the interactions of honeybees with other taxa
Wirta, H., Jones, M., Peña‐Aguilera, P., Chacón‐Duque, C., Vesterinen, E., Ovaskainen, O., Abrego, N., & Roslin, T. (2023). The role of seasonality in shaping the interactions of honeybees with other taxa. Ecology and Evolution, 13(10), Article e10580. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.10580
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Ecology and EvolutionAuthors
Date
2023Copyright
© 2023 the Authors
The Eltonian niche of a species is defined as its set of interactions with other taxa. How this set varies with biotic, abiotic and human influences is a core question of modern ecology. In seasonal environments, the realized Eltonian niche is likely to vary due to periodic changes in the occurrence and abundance of interaction partners and changes in species behavior and preferences. Also, human management decisions may leave strong imprints on species interactions. To compare the impact of seasonality to that of management effects, honeybees provide an excellent model system. Based on DNA traces of interaction partners archived in honey, we can infer honeybee interactions with floral resources and microbes in the surrounding habitats, their hives, and themselves. Here, we resolved seasonal and management-based impacts on honeybee interactions by sampling beehives repeatedly during the honey-storing period of honeybees in Finland. We then use a genome-skimming approach to identify the taxonomic contents of the DNA in the samples. To compare the effects of the season to the effects of location, management, and the colony itself in shaping honeybee interactions, we used joint species distribution modeling. We found that honeybee interactions with other taxa varied greatly among taxonomic and functional groups. Against a backdrop of wide variation in the interactions documented in the DNA content of honey from bees from different hives, regions, and beekeepers, the imprint of the season remained relatively small. Overall, a honey-based approach offers unique insights into seasonal variation in the identity and abundance of interaction partners among honeybees. During the summer, the availability and use of different interaction partners changed substantially, but hive- and taxon-specific patterns were largely idiosyncratic as modified by hive management. Thus, the beekeeper and colony identity are as important determinants of the honeybee's realized Eltonian niche as is seasonality.
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WileyISSN Search the Publication Forum
2045-7758Keywords
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https://converis.jyu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/193441637
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European Commission; Research Council of FinlandFunding program(s)
ERC European Research Council, H2020; Research infrastructures, HE; Research costs of Academy Professor, AoF; RIA Research and Innovation Action, HE; Research post as Academy Professor, AoF
The content of the publication reflects only the author’s view. The funder is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
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We would like to thank the beekeepers who participated in the study by providing honey samples from their beehives. We would also like to thank Suomen Mehiläishoitajain Liitto for supporting our study by asking their member beekeepers to participate. The sequencing service was provided by the Biomedicum Functional Genomics Unit at the Helsinki Institute of Life Science and Biocenter Finland at the University of Helsinki. We wish to acknowledge CSC—IT Center for Science, Finland—for computational resources and the Biodata Analytics Unit, University of Helsinki, for analytical services. Open access to the article is funded by the Helsinki University Library. We also thank Dominik Laetsch for advice in regard to bioinformatics and Vicencio Oostra for advice on the DNA-based taxonomic assignment. The study was funded by the Kone Foundation, grant number 2018104360, to HW. OO was funded by the Academy of Finland (grant nos. 336212 and 345110), the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence Funding Scheme (223257), and the European Union: the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 856506; ERC-synergy project LIFEPLAN), the HORIZON-CL6-2021-BIODIV-01 project 101059492 (Biodiversity Genomics Europe), and the HORIZON-INFRA-2021-TECH-01 project 101057437 (Biodiversity Digital Twin for Advanced Modeling, Simulation, and Prediction Capabilities). TR was funded by the Academy of Finland (VEGA, grant 322266) and the ERC under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (ERC-synergy grant 856506—LIFEPLAN). MJ was supported by the Academy of Finland's “Thriving Nature” research profiling action. ...License
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