Abstract Detail

Symbioses: Plant, Animal, and Microbe Interactions

Kolter, Andreas [1], Gemeinholzer, Birgit [1].

Identifying shifts in foraging behavior of bumblebees in the last decades: Metabarcoding of German natural history collections.

The fact that half of the German (non-parasitic) bumblebee species are classified as rare is alarming, especially in view of the fact that bumblebees are often regarded as keystone species in ecosystems. The diversity of floral resources is closely linked to the degree of anthropogenic influence on a habitat. Keeping track of these changes in biodiversity provided many challenges in the past. Pollen, for example, is not readily identifiable to species. The advent of metabarcoding has provided new tools with the potential to investigate dependencies between floral resources and pollinator diversity in greater detail than before. We optimized the laboratory workflow for pollen metabarcoding, including a complete revision of current plant metabarcoding primers (ITS). With these new tools at hand, we plan to barcode pollen (ITS2 and P6 loop) from natural history collections (up to 40 years old) and compare the diet breadth with newly collected specimens. Our analysis will include spatial data to gain new insights into what factors might be the driving force behind bumblebee decline. First experiments were conducted 2019 in Cuxhaven in both, a nature conservation site and a suburban area.

1 - Justus-Liebig-University, Systematic Botany, Heinrich-Buff-Ring 38, Giessen, 35392, Germany

Keywords:
DNA barcoding
bumblebee
pollination
metabarcoding
internal transcribed spacer (ITS)
natural history collection.

Presentation Type: Poster
Session: P, Symbioses: Plant, Animal, and Microbe Interactions Posters
Location: Virtual/Virtual
Date: Wednesday, July 29th, 2020
Time: 5:00 PM Time and date to be determined
Number: PSM001
Abstract ID:470
Candidate for Awards:None