Bridging the Gap between Field Experiments and Machine Learning: The EC H2020 B-GOOD Project as a Case Study towards Automated Predictive Health Monitoring of Honey Bee Colonies.

Honey bee colonies have great societal and economic importance. The main challenge that beekeepers face is keeping bee colonies healthy under ever-changing environmental conditions. In the past two decades, beekeepers that manage colonies of Western honey bees (Apis mellifera) have become increasingly concerned by the presence of parasites and pathogens affecting the bees, the reduction in pollen and nectar availability, and the colonies' exposure to pesticides, among others. Hence, beekeepers need to know the health condition of their colonies and how to keep them alive and thriving, which creates a need for a new holistic data collection method to harmonize the flow of information from various sources that can be linked at the colony level for different health determinants, such as bee colony, environmental, socioeconomic, and genetic statuses. For this purpose, we have developed and implemented the B-GOOD (Giving Beekeeping Guidance by computational-assisted Decision Making) project as a case study to categorize the colony's health condition and find a Health Status Index (HSI). Using a 3-tier setup guided by work plans and standardized protocols, we have collected data from inside the colonies (amount of brood, disease load, honey harvest, etc.) and from their environment (floral resource availability). Most of the project's data was automatically collected by the BEEP Base Sensor System. This continuous stream of data served as the basis to determine and validate an algorithm to calculate the HSI using machine learning. In this article, we share our insights on this holistic methodology and also highlight the importance of using a standardized data language to increase the compatibility between different current and future studies. We argue that the combined management of big data will be an essential building block in the development of targeted guidance for beekeepers and for the future of sustainable beekeeping.

PolLimCrop, a global dataset of pollen limitation in crops.

Pollination is a crucial ecosystem service for maintaining plant communities and food production. 75% of the main crops depend on or benefit from pollination services provided by animal pollinators. However, when these services are insufficient and/or inefficient, crops experience pollen limitation with, often, lower associated yield, which may translate into economic losses. We constructed a global dataset that gathers studies with pollination experiments, aiming to provide pollen limitation values of animal-pollinated crops worldwide. Pollination experiments included hand pollen supplementation treatments, where plants were subjected to pollen supplementation of outcross pollen, and natural pollination treatments. The PolLimCrop dataset comprises 294 studies and 1169 unique pollen supplementation experiments with values of pollen limitation for 108 crops, spanning 50 years and 62 countries.

Carcass traits and meat characteristics of grazing Nellore cattle submitted to different supplementation strategies in the tropics.

This study explored the effects of different supplementation strategies during the dry and rainy seasons in the tropics on the carcass traits and meat quality of Nellore cattle produced under grazing conditions. Additionally, a cost assessment of the supplementation strategies was conducted to define the most suitable ones from an economic standpoint. Twenty-eight non-castrated male animals (18 months) with an initial body weight of 327.9 ± 4.2 kg were used. The animals were equitably distributed in a randomized complete design thorough four supplementation strategies as follows: (i) mineral supplementation (MS) in both dry and rainy seasons (MS/MS), (ii) MS during the dry season and concentrate supplementation (CS) during the rainy season (MS/CS), (iii) CS during the dry season and MS during the rainy season (CS/MS), and (iv) CS in both dry and rainy seasons (CS/CS). Thereafter, carcass traits, primary carcass cut yields, meat quality traits, and chemical composition of the meat of cattle produced across different supplementation strategies were determined. Data revealed that animals under CS/CS showed the greatest (P < 0.01) hot carcass weights among the other supplementation strategies evaluated. Conversely, supplementation strategy did not affect (P > 0.10) the carcass traits (the ribeye area, final pH, and forequarter), meat quality traits (shear force, myofibrillar fragment index, sarcomere length, and color), and meat chemical composition (crude protein, fat, and moisture) of the animals. A cost assessment of the supplementation strategies revealed that CS/CS had the highest production costs. Nevertheless, CS/CS had the greatest income and profit, while MS/MS had the lowest ones. In conclusion, data suggest that cattle grazing on tropical forage under CS during at least one season (i.e., dry or rainy) produce similar meat quality traits and chemical composition of meat to those observed for animals under CS in both seasons. Additionally, the last supplementation strategy revealed the greatest profit indicators among the other explored.

The impact of habitat loss on pollination services for a threatened dune endemic plant.

Habitat loss is currently a major threat to biodiversity, affecting species interactions, such as plant-pollinator interactions. This is particularly important in self-incompatible plants relying on pollinators to reproduce and sustain their populations. Here, we evaluated how habitat loss affects the pollination system, plant individual-pollinator species interaction network, and plant reproductive fitness of the self-incompatible Jasione maritima var. sabularia, a threatened taxon from dune systems. This plant is a pollinator generalist, visited by 108 species from distinct taxonomic groups. Results suggest that increasing habitat loss led to a significant decline in pollinator richness, increased pollen limitation, and a decrease in reproductive fitness of J. maritima var. sabularia. Visitation rate per individual did not significantly change with available area, indicating that the quality of pollen differed across populations. The topology of the network between J. maritima var. sabularia individuals and its pollinator species did not change, which may be attributed to the stability in the core of pollinator species. This suggests that the lower fitness of plants with increasing habitat degradation may be explained not only by the lower richness of peripheral pollinators but also by the genetic structure of the plant populations, as there is a possible higher transference of less quality pollen by pollinators, ultimately compromising the persistence of plant populations. Our study highlights the need of future studies to integrate the fine details provided by individual-level networks, which will increase our understanding of the pattern of species interactions and its consequences for the fitness of threatened plant populations.

Flow cytometric analysis of pollen and spores: An overview of applications and methodology.

Pollen grains are the male gametophytes in a seed-plant life cycle. Their small, particulate nature and crucial role in plant reproduction have made them an attractive object of study using flow cytometry (FCM), with a wide range of applications existing in the literature. While methodological considerations for many of these overlap with those for other tissue types (e.g., general considerations for the measurement of nuclear DNA content), the relative complexity of pollen compared to single cells presents some unique challenges. We consider these here in the context of both the identification and isolation of pollen and its subunits, and the types of research applications. While the discussion here mostly concerns pollen, the general principles described here can be extended to apply to spores in ferns, lycophytes, and bryophytes. In addition to recommendations provided in more general studies, some recurring and notable issues related specifically to pollen and spores are highlighted.

Experimental insights on the function of ancillary pollen and stigma polymorphisms in plants with heteromorphic incompatibility.

Most heterostylous plants possess a reciprocal arrangement of stigmas and anthers (reciprocal herkogamy), heteromorphic self-incompatibility, and ancillary polymorphisms of pollen and stigmas. The topographical complementarity hypothesis proposes that ancillary polymorphisms function in the rejection of incompatible pollen thus promoting disassortative pollination. Here, we test this hypothesis by investigating patterns of pollen transfer and capture in populations of dimorphic Armeria maritima and A. pubigera and distylous Limonium vulgare (Plumbaginaceae), and by studying pollen adherence and germination patterns in A. maritima following controlled hand-pollinations. Armeria lacks reciprocal herkogamy allowing the evaluation of the extent to which ancillary polymorphisms affect the composition of pollen loads. We compared the amounts of compatible and incompatible pollen on stigmas in natural populations and calculated the proficiencies of pollen transfer for each mating type. We detected disassortative pollination in each species, and mating types did not differ in compatible pollen capture, although cob stigmas captured more incompatible pollen. Controlled hand-pollinations revealed the failure of incompatible pollen to adhere and germinate on stigmas. Our results provided evidence that, while structural in nature, pollen-stigma dimorphisms are tightly associated with heteromorphic incompatibility and likely function to promote disassortative pollination, especially in the absence of reciprocal herkogamy.

Hidden diversity in wild Beta taxa from Portugal: insights from genome size and ploidy level estimations using flow cytometry.

Crop wild relatives constitute a broad pool of potentially useful genetic resources for plant breeders. The genus Beta L. (Amaranthaceae) is an important source of crops, primarily for sugar production. Until recently, species within Section Beta were mostly cytogenetically uniform, with diploidy being prevalent. Still, with the discovery of tetraploid individuals of the wild B. macrocarpa in the Canary Islands, a large-scale study was necessary to evaluate the cytogenetic diversity within the wild Beta. For that, genome size and ploidy level of B. vulgaris subsp. maritima and B. macrocarpa from 21 populations across Portugal mainland and islands, including all know populations of the later taxon, were estimated using propidium iodide flow cytometry. This work revealed a cytogenetically diverse scenario. The analyzed populations were mostly diploid, except for one population of B. vulgaris subsp. maritima that presented both diploid and tetraploid individuals, and for two populations of B. macrocarpa where two or three cytotypes (diploids, tetraploids and/or hexaploids) were found. The nuclear DNA content of diploid individuals was estimated as 1.44±0.035 and 1.41±0.027 pg/2C for B. vulgaris subsp. maritima and B. macrocarpa, respectively. Also, leaves of both species presented variable levels of endopolyploidy. The obtained results are discussed within the context of interspecific hybridization and cryptic diversity and constitute significant data for the conservation of these wild Beta crop relatives.