Monitoring bee health in European agro-ecosystems using wing morphology and fat bodies

Maryse Vanderplanck (1) , Denis Michez (1) , Matthias Albrecht (2) , Eleanor Attridge , Aurélie Babin (3, 4) , Irene Bottero (5) , Tom Breeze (6) , Mark Brown (7) , Marie-Pierre Chauzat (4) , Elena Cini (6) , Cecilia Costa (8) , Pilar de la Rua (9) , Joachim de Miranda (10) , Gennaro Di Prisco (8, 11) , Christophe Dominik (12) , Daniel Dzul (9) , William Fiordaliso (1) , Sébastien Gennaux (1) , Guillaume Ghisbain (1) , Simon Hodge (5) , Alexandra-Maria Klein (13) , Jessica Knapp (14) , Anina Knauer , Marion Laurent (3) , Victor Lefebvre (2) , Marika Mänd (15) , Baptiste Martinet (1) , Vicente Martinez-Lopez (9, 16) , Piotr Medrzycki (8) , Simon Potts (17) , Kimberly Przybyla (1) , Risto Raimets (15) , Maj Rundlöf (14) , Oliver Schweiger (12) , Deepa Senapathi (17) , José Serrano (9) , Jane Stout (5) , Edward Straw (7) , Giovanni Tamburini (13) , Yusuf Toktas (1) , Maxence Gérard (1)

1 Laboratoire de Zoologie [Mons]
2 Agroscope
3 Laboratoire de Sophia Antipolis
4 UPA - Unité Pathologie de l'abeille
5 Trinity College Dublin
6 Centre for Agri-Environmental Research, School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, Reading University, Reading, UK
7 RHUL - Royal Holloway [University of London]
8 CREA
9 Universidad de Murcia
10 SLU - Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
11 Italian National Research Council
12 UFZ - Helmholtz Zentrum für Umweltforschung = Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research
13 University of Freiburg [Freiburg]
14 Lund University [Lund]
15 EMU - Estonian University of Life Sciences
16 University of Liverpool
17 UOR - University of Reading

Current global change substantially threatens pollinators, which directly impacts the pollination services underpinning the stability, structure and functioning of ecosystems. Amongst these threats, many synergistic drivers, such as habitat destruction and fragmentation, increasing use of agrochemicals, decreasing resource diversity, as well as climate change, are known to affect wild and managed bees. Therefore, reliable indicators for pollinator sensitivity to such threats are needed. Biological traits, such as phenotype (e.g. shape, size and asymmetry) and storage reserves (e.g. fat body size), are important pollinator traits linked to reproductive success, immunity, resilience and foraging efficiency and, therefore, could serve as valuable markers of bee health and pollination service potential. This data paper contains an extensive dataset of wing morphology and fat body content for the European honeybee ( Apis mellifera ) and the buff-tailed bumblebee ( Bombus terrestris ) sampled at 128 sites across eight European countries in landscape gradients dominated by two major bee-pollinated crops (apple and oilseed rape), before and after focal crop bloom and potential pesticide exposure. The dataset also includes environmental metrics of each sampling site, namely landscape structure and pesticide use. The data offer the opportunity to test whether variation in the phenotype and fat bodies of bees is structured by environmental factors and drivers of global change. Overall, the dataset provides valuable information to identify which environmental threats predominantly contribute to the modification of these traits.

Keywords: bee decline; bumblebee; global change; honeybee; landscape ecology; pesticides; wing shape

Domains: Biochemistry [q-bio.BM]; Invertebrate Zoology; Ecosystems

Maryse Vanderplanck, Denis Michez, Matthias Albrecht, Eleanor Attridge, Aurélie Babin, et al.. Monitoring bee health in European agro-ecosystems using wing morphology and fat bodies. One Ecosystem, 2021, 6, pp.e63653. ⟨10.3897/oneeco.6.e63653⟩. ⟨anses-03793131⟩