Abundance of common species, not species richness, drives delivery of a real-world ecosystem service.

Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning experiments have established that species richness and composition are both important determinants of ecosystem function in an experimental context. Determining whether this result holds for real-world ecosystem services has remained elusive, however, largely due to the lack of analytical methods appropriate for large-scale, associational data. Here, we use a novel analytical approach, the Price equation, to partition the contribution to ecosystem services made by species richness, composition and abundance in four large-scale data sets on crop pollination by native bees. We found that abundance fluctuations of dominant species drove ecosystem service delivery, whereas richness changes were relatively unimportant because they primarily involved rare species that contributed little to function. Thus, the mechanism behind our results was the skewed species-abundance distribution. Our finding that a few common species, not species richness, drive ecosystem service delivery could have broad generality given the ubiquity of skewed species-abundance distributions in nature.

Associations between maternal level of education and occupational status with placental glucocorticoid regeneration and sensitivity.

OBJECTIVES: Low socio-economic status (SES) is associated with increased disease risk in the involved and the next generation. The effects of low maternal SES on the offspring may be initiated prenatally. We hypothesized that fetoplacental glucocorticoid exposure might mediate the links. We examined associations between maternal level of education and occupational status (used as indices of SES) and placental expression of genes involved in glucocorticoid exposure and transfer between the mother and foetus. DESIGN AND PATIENTS: Placental biopsies were obtained from 67 healthy women (age 32.2 ± 5.3 years) with singleton, term pregnancies without obstetric complications who participated in a prospective Prediction and Prevention of Preeclampsia (PREDO) study. MEASURES: Level of education was self-reported, and occupational status was extracted from hospital records. Relative glucocorticoid receptor (GR; NR3C1), mineralocorticoid receptor (MR; NR3C2) and 11-beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (HSD11B1) and 2 (HSD11B2) mRNA levels were quantified by real-time PCR. RESULTS: Placental GR and HSD11B1 expression increased with decreasing maternal education (unadjusted P-values for linear trend = 0.04 and 0.02 and adjusted P-values = 0.06 and 0.09, respectively). Mothers with primary/secondary education had 52.9% (95% CI, 6.2-99.6, P = 0.03, adjusted P = 0.05) and 79.6% (95% CI, 6.5-153.6, P = 0.03, adjusted P = 0.09) higher GR and HSD11B1 mRNA levels compared with mothers with tertiary education. There were no other significant associations. CONCLUSIONS: Lower maternal level of education is associated with increased placental GR and HSD11B1 gene expression. This combination may regenerate active glucocorticoids in placenta and increase placental sensitivity to glucocorticoids, potentially leading to greater placental and foetal glucocorticoid exposure.

Warmer temperatures increase disease transmission and outbreak intensity in a host-pathogen system.

While rising global temperatures are increasingly affecting both species and their biotic interactions, the debate about whether global warming will increase or decrease disease transmission between individuals remains far from resolved. This may stem from the lack of empirical data. Using a tractable and easily manipulated insect host-pathogen system, we conducted a series of field and laboratory experiments to examine how increased temperatures affect disease transmission using the crop-defoliating pest, the fall armyworm (Spodoptera frugiperda) and its species-specific baculovirus, which causes a fatal infection. To examine the effects of temperature on disease transmission in the field, we manipulated baculovirus density and temperature. As infection occurs when a host consumes leaf tissue on which the pathogen resides, baculovirus density was controlled by placing varying numbers of infected neonate larvae on experimental plants. Temperature was manipulated by using open-top chambers (OTCs). The laboratory experiments examined how increased temperatures affect fall armyworm feeding and development rates, which provide insight into how host feeding behaviour and physiology may affect transmission. Disease transmission and outbreak intensity, measured as the cumulative fraction infected during an epizootic, increased at higher temperatures. However, there was no appreciable change in the mean transmission rate of the disease, which is often the focus of empirical and theoretical research. Instead, the coefficient of variation (CV) associated with the transmission rate shrunk. As the CV decreased, heterogeneity in disease risk across individuals declined, which resulted in an increase in outbreak intensity. In the laboratory, increased temperatures increased feeding rates and decreased developmental times. As the host consumes the virus along with the leaf tissue on which it resides, increased feeding rate is likely to increase the probability of an individual consuming virus-infected leaf tissue. On the other hand, decreased developmental time increases the sloughing of midgut cells, which is predicted to hinder viral infection. Increases in outbreak intensity or epizootic severity, as the climate warms, may lead to changes in the long-term dynamics of pests whose populations are strongly affected by host-pathogen interactions. Overall, this work demonstrates that the usual assumptions governing these effects, via changes in the mean transmission rate alone, may not be correct.

Insufficient pollinator visitation often limits yield in crop systems worldwide.

Declining pollinator populations could threaten global food production, especially if current crop yields are limited by insufficient pollinator visitation to flowers, in a phenomenon referred to as 'pollinator limitation'. Here, we assess the global prevalence of pollinator limitation, explore the risk factors, such as crop type or geographic region, that predict where pollinator limitation is more likely and ask by how much increases in pollinator visitation could improve crop yields. We address these questions using 198,360 plant-pollinator interactions and 2,083 yield measurements from 32 crop species grown in 120 study systems. We find that 28-61% of global crop systems are pollinator limited and that this limitation most frequently occurs in blueberry, coffee and apple crops. For a few datasets, we note that the probability of pollinator limitation decreases with greater forest land cover surrounding a crop field at 1 km, although average effect sizes are small. Finally, we estimate that for those crops we identify as pollinator limited, increasing pollinator visitation at all farms to existing levels observed in the 90th percentile of each study system would close 63% of yield gaps between high- and low-yielding fields. Our findings show variations in sensitivity to pollinator limitation across diverse crop systems and indicate that realistic increases in pollinator visitation could mitigate crop yield shortfalls attributable to pollinator limitation.

The risk of maternal obesity to the long-term health of the offspring.

The prevalence of maternal obesity has risen dramatically in recent years, with approximately one in five pregnant women in the UK now classed as obese (body mass index ≥ 30 kg/m(2) ) at antenatal booking. Obesity during pregnancy has been hypothesized to exert long-term health effects on the developing child through 'early life programming'. While this phenomenon has been well studied in a maternal undernutrition paradigm, the processes by which the programming effects of maternal obesity are mediated are less well understood. In humans, maternal obesity has been associated with a number of long-term adverse health outcomes in the offspring, including lifelong risk of obesity and metabolic dysregulation with increased insulin resistance, hypertension and dyslipidaemia, as well as behavioural problems and risk of asthma. The complex relationships between the maternal metabolic milieu and the developing foetus, as well as the potential influence of postnatal lifestyle and environment, have complicated efforts to study the programming effects of maternal overnutrition in humans. This review will examine the emerging evidence from human studies linking maternal obesity to adverse offspring outcomes.

Comparing two methods for quantifying soil-borne Entomophaga maimaiga resting spores.

To improve usability of methods for quantifying environmentally persistent entomophthoralean resting spores in soil, we modified and tested two methods using resting spores (azygospores) of the gypsy moth pathogen Entomophaga maimaiga. Both methods were effective for recovering resting spores at concentrations >100 resting spores/g dry soil. While a modification of a method originally described by Weseloh and Andreadis (2002) recovered more resting spores than a modified method based on Percoll density gradients, the ability to estimate true densities from counts was similar for both methods. Regression equations are provided for predicting true resting spore densities from counts, with R(2) values for both methods ≥0.90.

CropPol: A dynamic, open and global database on crop pollination.

Seventy five percent of the world's food crops benefit from insect pollination. Hence, there has been increased interest in how global change drivers impact this critical ecosystem service. Because standardized data on crop pollination are rarely available, we are limited in our capacity to understand the variation in pollination benefits to crop yield, as well as to anticipate changes in this service, develop predictions, and inform management actions. Here, we present CropPol, a dynamic, open, and global database on crop pollination. It contains measurements recorded from 202 crop studies, covering 3,394 field observations, 2,552 yield measurements (i.e., berry mass, number of fruits, and fruit density [kg/ha], among others), and 47,752 insect records from 48 commercial crops distributed around the globe. CropPol comprises 32 of the 87 leading global crops and commodities that are pollinator dependent. Malus domestica is the most represented crop (32 studies), followed by Brassica napus (22 studies), Vaccinium corymbosum (13 studies), and Citrullus lanatus (12 studies). The most abundant pollinator guilds recorded are honey bees (34.22% counts), bumblebees (19.19%), flies other than Syrphidae and Bombyliidae (13.18%), other wild bees (13.13%), beetles (10.97%), Syrphidae (4.87%), and Bombyliidae (0.05%). Locations comprise 34 countries distributed among Europe (76 studies), North America (60), Latin America and the Caribbean (29), Asia (20), Oceania (10), and Africa (7). Sampling spans three decades and is concentrated on 2001-2005 (21 studies), 2006-2010 (40), 2011-2015 (88), and 2016-2020 (50). This is the most comprehensive open global data set on measurements of crop flower visitors, crop pollinators and pollination to date, and we encourage researchers to add more datasets to this database in the future. This data set is released for non-commercial use only. Credits should be given to this paper (i.e., proper citation), and the products generated with this database should be shared under the same license terms (CC BY-NC-SA).

Bet-hedging and the orientation of juvenile passerines in fall migration.

1. Bet-hedging of innate migratory orientation of juvenile passerines may be a fitness-enhancing strategy for fall migration. Experimental studies support the view that juvenile passerines on their first migration to unknown winter grounds orient on a predetermined vector programme and make little or no adjustment for wind displacement. This trait, coupled with the unpredictable profile of wind speed and direction that the juvenile will encounter during migration, suggests that the fitness of a parent's juvenile offspring will be highly variable from year to year. Under these circumstances, within-clutch phenotypic variation in migratory orientation may be evolutionarily favoured. 2. To explore this hypothesis, a migration model is developed for a small passerine with breeding grounds in New England and winter grounds in the Caribbean. Parameterization is based on life history data of the neotropical migrant Dendroica caerulescens, the black-throated blue warbler. The model is simulated for the offspring of 20 000 adult females under each of a wide range of potential orientation programmes, incorporating stochastic wind profiles along potential migratory routes, based on 7 years of wind data for eastern North America. 3. Under these simulations, bet-hedging in the form of within-clutch variation of migratory orientation strongly dominates within-clutch homogeneity, yielding higher geometric mean fitness in all vector programmes considered. 4. The simulation results provide a potential explanation for the variation observed in the tracks of juvenile passerines. Bet-hedging also explains the extensively-documented 'coastal effect' in which fall banding stations along the Atlantic coast of the United States consistently capture a much higher percentage of juvenile birds than do more inland stations. 5. Bet-hedging is consistent with the published finding that slower flying birds exhibit greater variation in their migratory orientation than faster flying birds. 6. The bet-hedging model of migratory orientation presented in this paper provides a theoretical structure capable of organizing a diverse collection of field and laboratory observations as predictable consequences of an evolutionarily favoured strategy. This theory may constitute a major advance in our understanding of bird migration and thus justifies the design and execution of new laboratory and field experiments to assess its power and predictive reach.

Species turnover promotes the importance of bee diversity for crop pollination at regional scales.

Ecologists have shown through hundreds of experiments that ecological communities with more species produce higher levels of essential ecosystem functions such as biomass production, nutrient cycling, and pollination, but whether this finding holds in nature (that is, in large-scale and unmanipulated systems) is controversial. This knowledge gap is troubling because ecosystem services have been widely adopted as a justification for global biodiversity conservation. Here we show that, to provide crop pollination in natural systems, the number of bee species must increase by at least one order of magnitude compared with that in field experiments. This increase is driven by species turnover and its interaction with functional dominance, mechanisms that emerge only at large scales. Our results show that maintaining ecosystem services in nature requires many species, including relatively rare ones.

Decreased maternal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activity in very severely obese pregnancy: Associations with birthweight and gestation at delivery.

BACKGROUND: The maternal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal-axis (HPAA) undergoes dramatic activation during pregnancy. Increased cortisol and corticotrophin-releasing-hormone (CRH) associate with low birthweight and preterm labor. In non-pregnant obesity, the HPAA is activated but circulating cortisol levels are normal or lower than in lean women. We hypothesized that maternal cortisol levels would be lower in obese pregnancy, and would associate with increased fetal size and length of gestation. METHOD: Fasting serum cortisol was measured at 16, 28 and 36 weeks gestation and at 3-6 months postpartum in 276 severely obese and 135 lean women. In a subset of obese (n=20) and lean (n=20) we measured CRH, hormones that regulate bioavailable cortisol (corticosteroid-binding-globulin, estradiol, estriol, and progesterone). Urinary glucocorticoid metabolites were measured in pregnant (obese n=6, lean n=5) and non-pregnant (obese n=7, lean n=7) subjects. RESULTS: Maternal cortisol and HPAA hormones were lower in obese pregnancy. Total urinary glucocorticoid metabolites increased significantly in lean pregnancy, but not in obese. Lower maternal cortisol in obese tended to be associated with increased birthweight (r=-0.13, p=0.066). In obese, CRH at 28 weeks correlated inversely with gestational length (r=-0.49, p=0.04), and independently predicted gestational length after adjustment for confounding factors (mean decrease in CRH of -0.25 pmol/L (95% CI -0.45 to -0.043 pmol/L) per/day increase in gestation). CONCLUSION: In obese pregnancy, lower maternal cortisol without an increase in urinary glucocorticoid clearance may indicate a lesser activation of the HPAA than in lean pregnancy. This may offer a novel mechanism underlying increased birthweight and longer gestation in obese pregnancy.

Impact of Entomophaga maimaiga (Entomophthorales: Entomophthoraceae) on outbreak gypsy moth populations (Lepidoptera: Erebidae): the role of weather.

The fungal pathogen Entomophaga maimaiga Humber, Shimazu, and Soper is prevalent in gypsy moth [Lymantria dispar (L.)] populations throughout North America. To understand how weather-related variables influence gypsy moth-E. maimaiga interactions in the field, we measured fungal infection rates at 12 sites in central Pennsylvania over 3 yr, concurrently measuring rainfall, soil moisture, humidity, and temperature. Fungal mortality was assessed using both field-collected larvae and laboratory-reared larvae caged on the forest floor. We found significant positive effects of moisture-related variables (rainfall, soil moisture, and relative humidity) on mortality due to fungal infection in both data sets, and significant negative effects of temperature on the mortality of field-collected larvae. Lack of a clear temperature relationship with the mortality of caged larvae may be attributable to differential initiation of infection by resting spores and conidia or to microclimate effects. These relationships may be helpful in understanding how gypsy moth dynamics vary across space and time, and in forecasting how the gypsy moth and fungus will interact as they move into warmer or drier areas, or new weather conditions occur due to climate change.

Density-dependent resistance of the gypsy moth Lymantria dispar to its nucleopolyhedrovirus, and the consequences for population dynamics.

The processes controlling disease resistance can strongly influence the population dynamics of insect outbreaks. Evidence that disease resistance is density-dependent is accumulating, but the exact form of this relationship is highly variable from species to species. It has been hypothesized that insects experiencing high population densities might allocate more energy to disease resistance than those at lower densities, because they are more likely to encounter density-dependent pathogens. In contrast, the increased stress of high-density conditions might leave insects more vulnerable to disease. Both scenarios have been reported for various outbreak Lepidoptera in the literature. We tested the relationship between larval density and disease resistance with the gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar) and one of its most important density-dependent mortality factors, the nucleopolyhedrovirus (NPV) LdMNPV, in a series of bioassays. Larvae were reared in groups at different densities, fed the virus individually, and then reared individually to evaluate response to infection. In this system, resistance to the virus decreased with increasing larval density. Similarly, time to death was faster at high densities than at lower densities. Implications of density-resistance relationships for insect-pathogen population dynamics were explored in a mathematical model. In general, an inverse relationship between rearing density and disease resistance has a stabilizing effect on population dynamics.