Loading...
Picture: The photo shows a captured, living mason bee in a transparent plastic tube with blue printed graduations, which is held horizontally in front of the camera. In the background meadow soil can be seen.

When addressing land-use effects on plant-pollinator interaction networks, a major player has so far been largely ignored: Microbes. In MicroBEEs, we investigate how land-use induced changes in flowering plant composition and diversity affect bee-microbe interactions via changes in the species and nutritional composition of available floral resources.


We combine network analyses of bee-plant (resource) and bee-microbe interactions with DNA-meta barcoding, shotgun metagenomics, laboratory assays and nutritional analyses. Our aim is to better understand which functions underlie interactions among and between mutualistic bee-microbe networks at both gene and taxonomic level. Specifically, we want to 1) disentangle bee-microbe networks in relation to land-use intensity and corresponding plant-bee diversity and network complexity, 2) define major functional genes of the bee microbiome, 3) experimentally verify the functional role of selected bacteria, and 4) assess how resource diversity and composition (and thus land-use intensity) affect the functional/taxonomic stability of (mutualistic) interactions.


We hypothesize that the diversity and composition of the microbial community associated with bees affects the functional and taxonomic stability of their interaction and thus bee health and resilience and subsequently the structure of bee-microbe and bee-plant networks.


Our results will allow a novel perspective on the functional structure of mutualistic relationships and a better understanding of the inherent mechanisms driving interaction network structures in the pollination triangle of plants, bees and microbes and beyond.


Doc
Peters B., Keller A., Leonhardt S. D. (2022): Diets maintained in a changing world: Does land-use intensification alter wild bee communities by selecting for flexible generalists? Ecology & Evolution 12 (5), e8919. doi: 10.1002/ece3.8919
More information:  doi.org

Scientific assistants

Prof. Dr. Sara Leonhardt
Project manager
Prof. Dr. Sara Leonhardt
Technische Universität München (TUM)
Prof. Dr. Michael Schloter
Project manager
Prof. Dr. Michael Schloter
Technische Universität München (TUM)
Prof. Dr. Alexander Keller
Project manager
Prof. Dr. Alexander Keller
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität - LMU München
Birte Peters
Employee
Birte Peters
Technische Universität München (TUM)
Dr. Bärbel Foesel
Alumni
Dr. Bärbel Foesel
Yuri Pinheiro
Alumni
Yuri Pinheiro
Top