Boninia, Maria

Cislaghi, G.

Colombo, P.

Grewling, Ł.

Lommen, Suzanne T. E.

Müller-Schärer, Heinz

Prentović, M.

Smith, M.

Testoni, C.

Šikoparija, B.

RERO DOC Digital Library

A follow-up study examining airborne Ambrosia pollenin the Milan area in 2014 in relation to the accidentalintroduction of the ragweed leaf beetle Ophraella communaM. Bonini . B. Sˇikoparija . M. Prentovic´ . G. Cislaghi .P. Colombo . C. Testoni . Ł. Grewling . S. T. E. Lommen .H. Mu¨ller-Scha¨rer . M. SmithKeywords Aerobiology  Ragweed Ophraella communa  Biocontrol agentThe North American invasive alien Ambrosiaartemisiifolia L. (common or short ragweed) isconsidered to be an important weed in agricultureand source of highly allergenic pollen (Smith et al.2013; Essl et al. 2015 references therein) in many partsof the world, including Europe. The oligophagous leafbeetle Ophraella communa LeSage 1986 (Coleoptera:Chrysomelidae) preferably feeds from A.artemisiifolia, and is successfully used as a biologicalagent to control this weed in China (Zhou et al. 2014).It can prevent plants from producing seeds and pollenwhen it kills them before ﬂowering. In 2013, thisbeetle was found to have accidentally established inSouthern Switzerland and Northern Italy, with highincidence and densities in the Milan area (Mu¨ller-Scha¨rer et al. 2014). The map showing the presence ofthe beetle has now been updated for 2014 (Fig. 1). Wehave previously shown, using linear regression mod-els, that the exceptionally low amounts of airborneAmbrosia pollen observed in the Milan area in 2013could not be explained by meteorology in that year.We therefore suggested that the decrease might berelated to the presence of large numbers of O.communa (Bonini et al. 2015).European COST Action FA1203 (SMARTER,http://ragweed.eu) ‘‘Task Force Ophraella’’ is continu-ing to monitor the dynamics of O. communa and A.artemisiifolia in Northern Italy. Atmospheric concen-trations ofAmbrosia pollen are also routinelymonitoredin the Milan region by sites belonging to the ItalianMonitoring Network in Aerobiology (R.I.M.A.) of theItalian Aerobiology Association (A.I.A.) using volu-metric spore traps of the Hirst design (Hirst 1952) andfollowing the standard methods of A.I.A.-R.I.M.A.(2009).Ambrosia pollen data recorded at Legnanowereused for the analysis, as this is the closest pollen-mon-itoring station to Malpensa airport where the meteoro-logical data were collected (Fig. 1).M. Bonini (&)  G. Cislaghi  P. Colombo  C. TestoniDepartment of Medical Prevention, Public Health, LocalHealth Authority of Milan 1, Parabiago, MI, Italye-mail: maira.bonini@aslmi1.mi.itB. Sˇikoparija  M. Prentovic´Laboratory for Palynology, Department of Biology andEcology, Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad,Novi Sad, SerbiaB. SˇikoparijaBioSens Institute, Novi Sad, SerbiaŁ. Grewling  M. SmithLaboratory of Aeropalynology, Faculty of Biology, AdamMickiewicz University, Poznan´, PolandS. T. E. Lommen  H. Mu¨ller-Scha¨rerDepartment of Biology, University of Fribourg, Fribourg,Switzerland1http://doc.rero.chPublished in Aerobiologia 32(2): 371–374, 2016which should be cited to refer to this work.Minimum temperatures in March and June, humid-ity in June and the number of days with rainfall inSeptember have previously been shown to signiﬁ-cantly inﬂuence the amount of Ambrosia pollenrecorded in the Milan region during August andSeptember (Bonini et al. 2014, 2015). Conditions weregenerally warmer and wetter in 2014, compared to theprevious year (Table 1). We therefore decided toexamine airborne Ambrosia pollen levels and meteo-rological data recorded before and during the mainﬂowering period of Ambrosia (August–September) in2014, to see whether Ambrosia pollen levels werehigher or lower than expected at this time. Thevariables of monthly meteorological data were conse-quently entered into one simple linear regressionmodel and two multiple linear regression models thatwere constructed to predict the amount of Ambrosiapollen recorded at Legnano (Table 2) as described inBonini et al. (2015).The trend towards lower amounts of airborneAmbrosia pollen recorded at Legnano, which wasFig. 1 The presence of the leaf beetle Ophraella communa in Southern Switzerland and Northern Italy in 2013 (Mu¨ller-Scha¨rer et al.2014) and in 2014. Legnano pollen-monitoring site and Malpensa airport, where the meteorological data are collected, are also shownTable 1 Climate data recorded at Malpensa airport andaccessed via http://www.tutiempo.net, showing 2014 values inrelation to long-term mean for the period 1981–20102013 2014 1981–2010Mean annual Tm 6.50 7.60 5.93Mean annual RN 150.00 167.00 127.14Tm (March) 0.30 2.20 0.58Tm (June) 13.50 14.60 13.60H (June) 60.00 65.60 67.64RN (September) 7.00 12.00 10.50Tm minimum temperature (C); H mean humidity (%); RNindicator for the occurrence of rain or drizzle2http://doc.rero.chnoted in the previous study, continued (Bonini et al.2015). The 2014 airborne pollen season was thesecond lowest since 2000 (Fig. 2); this was repeated atthe other two stations in the Milan area—Magenta andRho (data not shown). The three linear regressionmodels highly overestimated the amount of airborneAmbrosia pollen recorded in August and September in2014 (Fig. 2), particularly the simple linear regressionmodel that only included the number of days withprecipitation in September (model 1). The two stan-dard multiple regression models that used acombination of March averages of daily minimumtemperature and the number of days with precipitationin September (model 2) and June averages of dailyrelative humidity and the number of days withprecipitation in September (model 3) were in closeragreement (in comparison with model 1), but thevalues were still too high (over 300 %). It is interestingto note that both models 2 and 3 predicted lower thanaverage atmospheric concentrations of Ambrosiapollen in August and September 2014. As seen inour earlier study, the variables entered into theseTable 2 Simple linear and standard multiple regression models for predicting the amount of airborne Ambrosia pollen recorded inAugust and September in LegnanoModel no. Regression equation Adj. R2 p Komolgorov–Smirnov test (p)1Koenker–Bassettest (p)21 5860.751 ? 223.308*RN (September) 0.308 0.045 0.200 0.2522 6234.579 - 380.312*Tm(March) - 190.795*RN(September)0.455 0.036 0.200 0.7283 10751.921 - 79.487*H(June) - 209.352*RN (September)0.558 0.016 0.200 0.685Models calibrated using data not included in model validation (Bonini et al. 2015). Tm (March) March averages of daily minimumtemperatures (C); H (June) June averages of daily relative humidity (%); RN (September) number of days with precipitation (rain ordrizzle) in September1 p[ 0.05 normality of residuals distribution is not violated2 p[ 0.05 homogeneity of residual variance (homoscedasticity) is not violatedFig. 2 The amount ofAmbrosia pollen recordedannually during August–September (AAP) from2000 to 2014 at Legnanosituated in the Northwest ofthe Province of Milan. Theresults of the three linearregression models used topredict the AAP in 2014 arealso shown in relation to the2000–2012 mean. Note thatthe mean does not includeAmbrosia pollen datapreviously used to test themodels (2009, 2010 and2013)3http://doc.rero.chmodels were all negatively correlated with the amountof airborne Ambrosia pollen (Bonini et al. 2015). Ittherefore appears that the generally warmer and wetterconditions experienced at these times were not con-ducive to the production and dispersal of Ambrosiapollen, and so lower than average pollen levels were tobe expected. However, this still does not explain theextremely low levels of atmospheric Ambrosia pollenrecorded in 2014.In conclusion, we provide evidence that the pres-ence of O. communa may again explain the lowerlevels of Ambrosia pollen recorded in theMilan regionin 2014. Although the densities of O. communaobserved in 2014 were lower than those in 2013, wedid observe that the beetle was feeding on the maleﬂower heads. Damaged capitula had either fallen offbefore anthesis or contained retarded ﬂorets, therebynotably reducing the amount of available pollen (S.Lommen; personal observation, unpublished results).Ongoing research aims to experimentally study theeffect of meteorology on Ophraella development, andon the impact of Ophraella on Ambrosia plantsurvival, pollen production and pollen release alongan elevational gradient starting from the Milan areanorthwards.Acknowledgments We acknowledge support from EU COSTAction FA1203 ‘‘Sustainable management of Ambrosiaartemisiifolia in Europe (SMARTER)’’ (http://ragweed.eu).This work was partly ﬁnanced by ECOST-STSM-FA1203-250415-058150 to MS. Many thanks to Olivier Broennimann(University of Lausanne, Switzerland) for helping to produceFig. 1.ReferencesA.I.A.-R.I.M.A. (2009). Manuale di gestione e qualita` dellarete italiana di monitoraggio in Aerobiologia. Bologna:R.I.M.A.. ISBN: 978-88-900277-1-0: 1–148.Bonini, M., Sˇikoparija, B., Prentovic´, M., Cislaghi, G.,Colombo, P., Grewling, Ł., et al. (2014). Seasonal varia-tions in the amount airborne ragweed pollen in Milan inrelation to environmental factors. Third InternationalRagweed Conference, Rho, Italy, April 3–4, 2014.Bonini, M., Sˇikoparija, B., Prentovic´, M., Cislaghi, G.,Colombo, P., Testoni, C., et al. (2015). Is the recentdecrease in airborne Ambrosia pollen in the Milan area dueto the accidental introduction of the ragweed leaf beetleOphraella communa? Aerobiologia. doi:10.1007/s10453-015-9380-8.Essl, F., Biro´, K., Brandes, D., Broennimann, O., Bullock, J. M.,Chapman, D. S., et al. (2015). Biological ﬂora of the BritishIsles: Ambrosia artemisiifolia. Journal of Ecology, 104(4),1069–1098.Hirst, J. M. (1952). An automatic volumetric spore trap. TheAnnals of Applied Biology, 39(2), 257–265.Mu¨ller-Scha¨rer, H., Lommen, S. T. E., Rossinelli, M., Bonini,M., Boriani, M., Bosio, G., & Schaffner, U. (2014).Ophraella communa, the ragweed leaf beetle, has suc-cessfully landed in Europe: Fortunate coincidence orthreat? Weed Research, 54(2), 109–119.Smith, M., Cecchi, L., Skjoth, C. A., Karrer, G., & Sikoparija, B.(2013). Common ragweed: A threat to environmentalhealth in Europe. Environment International, 61, 115–126.Zhou, Z.-S., Chen, H.-S., Zheng, X.-W., Guo, J.-Y., Guo,W., Li,M., et al. (2014). Control of the invasive weed Ambrosiaartemisiifolia with Ophraella communa and Epiblemastrenuana. Biocontrol Science and Technology, 24(8),950–964.4http://doc.rero.ch

A follow-up study examining airborne Ambrosia pollen in the Milan area in 2014 in relation to the accidental introduction of the ragweed leaf beetle Ophraella communa

A follow-up study examining airborne Ambrosia pollen in the Milan area in 2014 in relation to the accidental introduction of the ragweed leaf beetle Ophraella communa

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

RERO DOC Digital Library