Comparison of Orchid Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Species Composition Collected with Four Chemical Attractants

Orchid bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Euglossini) are a diverse and important group of Neotropical pollinators. Numerous chemicals have been used in sampling orchid bees, and species-specific attraction, particularly of males, to these chemicals is well known. However, there have been few studies that have quantified differences in the species composition of orchid bees attracted to particular chemicals. In this study, we compared the abundance and species composition of orchid bees collected with 4 commonly used attractants: benzyl acetate, eucalyptol (or cineole), eugenol, and methyl salicylate. Eucalyptol collected the greatest abundance and species richness of orchid bees. Indicator species analysis revealed that 3 species, Euglossa imperialis Cockerell, Euglossa obtusa Dressler, and Eufriesea mexicana (Mocsáry), were significantly associated with eucalyptol, and 1, Eulaema marcii Nemésio, with benzyl acetate. The multi-response permutation procedure revealed relatively large differences in species composition of orchid bees collected with eucalyptol vs. benzyl acetate and eucalyptol vs. eugenol. Our results showed that eucalyptol and benzyl acetate were the most effective and complimentary attractants, but even less effective attractants such as eugenol may attract novel species

Climate change alters impacts of extreme climate events on a tropical perennial tree crop

Anthropogenic climate change causes more frequent and intense fluctuations in the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Understanding the effects of ENSO on agricultural systems is crucial for predicting and ameliorating impacts on lives and livelihoods, particularly in perennial tree crops, which may show both instantaneous and delayed responses. Using cocoa production in Ghana as a model system, we analyse the impact of ENSO on annual production and climate over the last 70 years. We report that in recent decades, El Niño years experience reductions in cocoa production followed by several years of increased production, and that this pattern has significantly shifted compared with prior to the 1980s. ENSO phase appears to affect the climate in Ghana, and over the same time period, we see corresponding significant shifts in the climatic conditions resulting from ENSO extremes, with increasing temperature and water stress. We attribute these changes to anthropogenic climate change, and our results illustrate the big data analyses necessary to improve understanding of perennial crop responses to climate change in general, and climate extremes in particular

A review of the ecological value of Cusuco National Park an urgent call forconservation action in a highly threatened Mesoamerican cloud forest

Cloud forests are amongst the most biologically unique, yet threatened, ecosystems in Mesoamerica. We summarize the ecological value and conservation status of a well-studied cloud forest site: Cusuco National Park (CNP), a 23,440 ha protected area in the Merendón mountains, northwest Honduras. We show CNP to have exceptional biodiversity; of 966 taxa identified to a species-level to date, 362 (37.5%) are Mesoamerican endemics, 67 are red-listed by the IUCN, and at least 49 are micro-endemics known only from the Merendón range. CNP also provides key ecosystem services including provision of drinking water and downstream flood mitigation, as well as carbon sequestration, with an estimated stock of 3.5 million megagrams of carbon in 2000. Despite its ecological importance, CNP faces multiple environmental threats and associated stresses, including deforestation (1,759 ha since 2000 equating to 7% of total forest area), poaching (7% loss of mammal relative abundance per year), amphibian declines due to chytridiomycosis (70% of species threatened or near-threatened), and climate change (a mean 2.6 °C increase in temperature and 112 mm decrease in rainfall by 2100). Despite conservation actions, including community ranger patrols, captive-breeding programmes, and ecotourism initiatives, environmental degradation of CNP continues. Further action is urgently required, including reinforcement and expansion of ranger programmes, greater stakeholder engagement, community education programmes, development of alternative livelihood projects, and legislative enforcement and prosecution. Without a thorough and rapid response to understand and mitigate illegal activities, the extirpation and extinction of species and the loss of vital ecosystem services are inevitable in the coming decades

Data from: Towards accurate species-level metabarcoding of arthropod communities from the tropical forest canopy

Metabarcoding of arthropod communities can be used for assessing species diversity in tropical forests but the methodology requires validation for accurate and repeatable species occurrences in complex mixtures. This study investigates how the composition of ecological samples affects the accuracy of species recovery. Starting with field-collected bulk samples from the tropical canopy, the recovery of specimens was tested for subsets of different body sizes and major taxa, by assembling these subsets into increasingly complex composite pools. After metabarcoding, we track whether richness, diversity and most importantly composition of any size class or taxonomic subset is affected by the presence of other subsets in the mixture. Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) greatly exceeded the number of morphospecies in most taxa, even under very stringent sequencing read filtering. There was no significant effect on the recovered OTU richness of small and medium-sized arthropods when metabarcoded alongside larger arthropods, despite substantial biomass differences in the mixture. The recovery of taxonomic subsets was not generally influenced by the presence of other taxa, although with some exceptions likely due to primer mismatches. Considerable compositional variation within size and taxon-based subcommunities were evident resulting in high beta diversity among samples from within a single tree canopy, but this beta diversity was not affected by experimental manipulation. We conclude that OTU recovery in complex arthropod communities, with sufficient sequencing depth and within reasonable size ranges, is not skewed by variable biomass of the constituent species. This could remove the need for time-intensive manual sorting prior to metabarcoding. However, there remains a chance of taxonomic bias, which may be primer-dependent. There will never be a panacea primer; instead, metabarcoding studies should carefully consider whether the aim is broad-scale turnover, in which case these biases may not be important, or species lists, in which case separate PCRs and sequencing might be necessary. OTU number inflation remains an issue in metabarcoding and requires bioinformatic development, particularly in read filtering and OTU clustering, and/or greater use of species-identifying sequences generated outside of bulk sequencing

The taxonomic composition and chronology of a museum collection of Coleoptera revealed through large-scale digitisation

IntroductionHistoric museum collections hold a wealth of biodiversity data that are essential to our understanding of the rapidly changing natural world. Novel curatorial practices are needed to extract and digitise these data, especially for the innumerable pinned insects whose collecting information is held on small labels.MethodsWe piloted semi-automated specimen imaging and digitisation of specimen labels for a collection of ~29,000 pinned insects of ground beetles (Carabidae: Lebiinae) held at the Natural History Museum, London. Raw transcription data were curated against literature sources and non-digital collection records. The primary data were subjected to statistical analyses to infer trends in collection activities and descriptive taxonomy over the past two centuries.ResultsThis work produced research-ready digitised records for 2,546 species (40% of known species of Lebiinae). Label information was available on geography in 91% of identified specimens, and the time of collection in 39.8% of specimens and could be approximated for nearly all specimens. Label data revealed the great age of this collection (average age 91.4 years) and the peak period of specimen acquisition between 1880 and 1930, with little differences among continents. Specimen acquisition declined greatly after about 1950. Early detected species generally were present in numerous specimens but were missing records from recent decades, while more recently acquired species (after 1950) were represented mostly by singleton specimens only. The slowing collection growth was mirrored by the decreasing rate of species description, which was affected by huge time lags of several decades to formal description after the initial specimen acquisition.DiscussionHistoric label information provides a unique resource for assessing the state of biodiversity backwards to pre-industrial times. Many species held in historical collections especially from tropical super-diverse areas may not be discovered ever again, and if they do, their recognition requires access to digital resources and more complete levels of species description. A final challenge is to link the historical specimens to contemporary collections that are mostly conducted with mechanical trapping of specimens and DNA-based species recognition

Orchid Bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Euglossini) of Cusuco National Park, State of Cortés, Honduras

Orchid bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Euglossini) are abundant and important pollinators of Neotropical forests, but orchid bee diversity is still poorly known in much of Mesoamerica, particularly in cloud forests. This paper presents results of a 2012 to 2013 survey of orchid bee diversity in Cusuco National Park, a cloud forest environment in northwest Honduras. Orchid bees were collected using insect nets at bait stations with chemical attractants. Bait stations were located at 68 sample sites throughout the park. We collected 4,293 orchid bees representing 24 species and 4 genera. One species, Euglossa imperialis Cockerell, accounted for 67.6% of the total individuals collected. A substantial easterly range extension was established for Eufriesea pallida (Kimsey). Our study provides the first intensive inventory of cloud forest orchid bee diversity in the region. Furthermore, it provides baseline data for future studies of orchid bees in a key biodiversity area that is threatened by human population growth and associated land use changes