30 research outputs found
Bee conservation policy at the global, regional and national levels
No full textBees are important both ecologically and economically
for the ecosystem service role they play as pollinators. Documented global
decline in bees has sparked the formation of a global policy framework for
pollinators, primarily through the International Pollinator Initiative
within the Convention of Biological Diversity. There are now regional
Pollinator Initiatives, along with regional and national conservation
legislation, that can impact on the conservation of bees. The creation of
bee Regional Red Lists, under guidance from the International Union for
Conservation of Nature, along with conservation priority lists offer another
mechanism for streamlining bees into regional, national or subnational
conservation policy and practice. These structures, if utilised properly,
can form a coordinated and effective policy framework on which conservation
actions can be based
The Chinwag: Memory, Digital Technology and Traditional Music
No full text The author discusses her piece The Chinwag as sound art that has recorded memory and history, its impermanence and its relationship to digital memory and traditional music. </jats:p
Regional red list of Irish bees
No full textIn 2003 the Higher Education Authority awarded funding for a three year project on
the conservation of native Irish bees under their North-South programme for
collaborative research. This work was undertaken by Dr. Úna Fitzpatrick and Dr.
Mark Brown in the School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin and by Mr.
Tomás Murray and Dr. Rob Paxton in the School of School of Biological Sciences,
Queen’s University Belfast.
One important element of this research has been the documentation of the
conservation status of native bees in Ireland.
A three-step sequential process has been used to document the status of each of the
native species, indicate the conservation action required, and highlight those species
of most importance from a conservation perspective:
(1) Identification of the threatened species using internationally recognized
methodology - production of an IUCN regional red list for the island of
Ireland.
(2) Documentation of the total conservation actions required for the assessed
group - completed IUCN conservation action authority files for threatened,
near threatened and data deficient species.
(3) Conversion from the regional red list to a national list of conservation priority
species
This summary report contains the Regional Red List of Irish bees, IUCN conservation
actions authority files for all threatened, near threatened and data deficient species in
the red list, and a list of national conservation priority species.The National Parks and Wildlife Service Red Lists are available online at http://www.npws.ie/publications/redlists/National Parks and Wildlife Service in the Republic of
IrelandEnvironment and Heritage Service in Northern IrelandAuthor has checked copyrightAD 28/01/201
Local-scale factors structure wild bee communities in protected areas
No full textIn the current context of global habitat loss, a fundamental challenge is to understand how ecological processes interact to determine community composition. Despite the accumulating evidence base for global declines in bee populations, few studies have addressed the relative importance of local environmental and large-scale spatial factors in maintaining diverse bee communities outside of agricultural habitats, and particularly in areas protected for nature conservation. We analysed bee community data that we collected from 40 Special Areas of Conservation representing five distinct European Natura 2000 priority habitats in Ireland, quantifying local habitat features within each site and surrounding land-use. Species data were collected in a nested sampling design composed of three hierarchical levels such as site, habitat and region and analysed using diversity partitioning. The speciesenvironment relationship was also decomposed into regional-, landscape- and local-scales by variance partitioning using partial canonical correspondence analysis. Wild bee species richness and abundance were highly dependent on habitat type, but the majority of regional diversity was contained within sites, as opposed to species turnover across sites and regions. Bee communities were primarily structured by local-scale factors associated with nesting resources and grazing regime, with non-Bombus taxa being more sensitive to landscape-scale differences in adjacent habitats than Bombus taxa. Regional-scale processes, such as species sorting along longitudinal gradients, were of minor importance in structuring bee communities in this system. Synthesis and applications. Within habitats, local species richness, rather than species turnover at higher spatial scales, accounted for the majority of regional bee diversity. Local environmental factors were powerful determinants of community composition. Therefore, management effort prioritising the maintenance of a diversity of high-quality habitats within a broad network of protected areas best facilitates bee conservation in this system. At a regional level, schemes for conserving and restoring important bee habitats must be habitat- and taxon-specific, as the impact of individual local-scale factors and surrounding land-use on community composition is highly habitat- and taxon-dependent.peer-reviewe
Local-scale factors structure wild bee communities in protected areas
No full textIn the current context of global habitat loss, a fundamental challenge is to understand how ecological processes interact to determine community composition. Despite the accumulating evidence base for global declines in bee populations, few studies have addressed the relative importance of local environmental and large-scale spatial factors in maintaining diverse bee communities outside of agricultural habitats, and particularly in areas protected for nature conservation. We analysed bee community data that we collected from 40 Special Areas of Conservation representing five distinct European Natura 2000 priority habitats in Ireland, quantifying local habitat features within each site and surrounding land-use. Species data were collected in a nested sampling design composed of three hierarchical levels such as site, habitat and region and analysed using diversity partitioning. The speciesenvironment relationship was also decomposed into regional-, landscape- and local-scales by variance partitioning using partial canonical correspondence analysis. Wild bee species richness and abundance were highly dependent on habitat type, but the majority of regional diversity was contained within sites, as opposed to species turnover across sites and regions. Bee communities were primarily structured by local-scale factors associated with nesting resources and grazing regime, with non-Bombus taxa being more sensitive to landscape-scale differences in adjacent habitats than Bombus taxa. Regional-scale processes, such as species sorting along longitudinal gradients, were of minor importance in structuring bee communities in this system. Synthesis and applications. Within habitats, local species richness, rather than species turnover at higher spatial scales, accounted for the majority of regional bee diversity. Local environmental factors were powerful determinants of community composition. Therefore, management effort prioritising the maintenance of a diversity of high-quality habitats within a broad network of protected areas best facilitates bee conservation in this system. At a regional level, schemes for conserving and restoring important bee habitats must be habitat- and taxon-specific, as the impact of individual local-scale factors and surrounding land-use on community composition is highly habitat- and taxon-dependent
Building on IUCN Regional Red Lists to Produce Lists of Species of Conservation Priority: a Model with Irish Bees
No full text
Landscape effects on extremely fragmented populations of a rare solitary bee, Colletes floralis
No full textGlobally there is concern over the decline of bees, an ecologically important group of pollinating insects. Genetic studies provide insights into population structure that are crucial for conservation management but that would be impossible to obtain by conventional ecological methods. Yet conservation genetic studies of bees have primarily focussed on social species rather than the more species-rich solitary bees. Here we investigate the population structure of Colletes floralis, a rare and threatened solitary mining bee, in Ireland and Scotland using nine microsatellite loci. Genetic diversity was surprisingly as high in Scottish (Hebridean island) populations at the extreme northwestern edge of the species range as in mainland Irish populations further south. Extremely high genetic differentiation among populations was detected; multilocus FST was up to 0.53, and G’ST and Dest were even higher (maximum: 0.85 and 1.00 respectively). A pattern of isolation by distance was evident for sites separated by land. Water appears to act as a substantial barrier to gene flow yet sites separated by sea did not exhibit isolation by distance. Colletes floralis populations are extremely isolated and probably not in regional migration-drift equilibrium. GIS-based landscape genetic analysis reveals urban areas as a potential and substantial barrier to gene flow. Our results highlight the need for urgent site-specific management action to halt the decline of this and potentially other rare solitary bees
Classification of European and Mediterranean coastal dune vegetation
No full textAims: Although many phytosociological studies have provided detailed local and regional descriptions of coastal dune vegetation, a unified classification of this vegetation in Europe and the Mediterranean Basin has been missing. Our aim is to produce a formalized classification of this vegetation and to identify the main factors driving its plant species composition at a continental scale. Location: Atlantic and Baltic coasts of Europe, Mediterranean Basin and the Black Sea region. Methods: We compiled a database of 30,759 plots of coastal vegetation, which were resampled to reduce unbalanced sampling effort, obtaining a data set of 11,769 plots. We classified these plots with TWINSPAN, interpreted the resulting clusters and used them for developing formal definitions of phytosociological alliances of coastal dune vegetation, which were included in an expert system for automatic vegetation classification. We related the alliances to climatic factors and described their biogeographic features and their position in the coastal vegetation zonation. We examined and visualized the floristic relationships among these alliances by means of DCA ordination. Results: We defined 18 alliances of coastal dune vegetation, including the newly described Centaureo cuneifoliae-Verbascion pinnatifidi from the Aegean region. The main factors underlying the differentiation of these alliances were biogeographic and macroclimatic contrasts between the Atlantic-Baltic, Mediterranean and Black Sea regions, along with ecological differences between shifting and stable dunes. The main difference in species composition was between the Atlantic-Baltic and Mediterranean-Black Sea regions. Within the former region, the main difference was driven by the different ecological conditions between shifting and stable dunes, whereas within the latter, the main difference was biogeographic between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Conclusions: The first formal classification of the European coastal dune vegetation was established, accompanied by an expert system containing the formal definitions of alliances, which can be applied to new data sets. The new classification system critically revised the previous concepts and integrated them into a consistent framework, which reflects the main gradients in species composition driven by biogeographic influences, macroclimate and the position of the sites in the coast-inland zonation of the dune systems. A revision of the class concept used in EuroVegChecklist is also proposed.</p
Microsatellite analysis supports the existence of three cryptic species within the bumble bee Bombus lucorum sensu lato
No full textMitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI) partial sequences are widely used in taxonomy for species identification. Increasingly, these sequence identities are combined with modeling approaches to delineate species. Yet the validity of species delineation based on such DNA ‘barcodes’ is rarely tested and may be called into question by phenomena such as ancestral polymorphisms in DNA sequences, phylogeographic divergence, mitochondrial introgression and hybridization, or distortion of mitochondrial inheritance through such factors as Wolbachia infection. The common and widespread European bumble bee Bombus lucorum s. lato contains three distinct mitochondrial DNA lineages that are assumed to represent three cryptic species, namely Bombus cryptarum, B. lucorum s. str. and Bombus magnus. To test whether nuclear gene pools of the three putative species were differentiated, we genotyped 304 sympatric members of the lucorum complex (54 B. cryptarum females, 168 B. lucorum s. str. females and 82 B. magnus females, as defined using mtDNA COI haplotypes) from 11 localities spread across the island of Ireland at seven nuclear microsatellite loci. Multilocus genotypes clustered into three discrete groups that largely corresponded to the three mtDNA lineages: B. cryptarum, B. lucorum s. str. and B. magnus. The good fit of mitochondrial haplotype to nuclear (microsatellite) genotypic data supports the view that these three bumble bee taxa are reproductively isolated species, as well as providing a vindication of species identity using so-called DNA barcodes
