| 1. |
- Kanoni, Stavroula, et al.
(författare)
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Implicating genes, pleiotropy, and sexual dimorphism at blood lipid loci through multi-ancestry meta-analysis.
- 2022
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Ingår i: Genome biology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1474-760X .- 1465-6906 .- 1474-7596. ; 23:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Genetic variants within nearly 1000 loci are known to contribute to modulation of blood lipid levels. However, the biological pathways underlying these associations are frequently unknown, limiting understanding of these findings and hindering downstream translational efforts such as drug target discovery.To expand our understanding of the underlying biological pathways and mechanisms controlling blood lipid levels, we leverage a large multi-ancestry meta-analysis (N=1,654,960) of blood lipids to prioritize putative causal genes for 2286 lipid associations using six gene prediction approaches. Using phenome-wide association (PheWAS) scans, we identify relationships of genetically predicted lipid levels to other diseases and conditions. We confirm known pleiotropic associations with cardiovascular phenotypes and determine novel associations, notably with cholelithiasis risk. We perform sex-stratified GWAS meta-analysis of lipid levels and show that 3-5% of autosomal lipid-associated loci demonstrate sex-biased effects. Finally, we report 21 novel lipid loci identified on the X chromosome. Many of the sex-biased autosomal and X chromosome lipid loci show pleiotropic associations with sex hormones, emphasizing the role of hormone regulation in lipid metabolism.Taken together, our findings provide insights into the biological mechanisms through which associated variants lead to altered lipid levels and potentially cardiovascular disease risk.
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| 2. |
- Allen-Perkins, Alfonso, et al.
(författare)
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CropPol : a dynamic, open and global database on crop pollination
- 2022
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Ingår i: Ecology. - : Wiley. - 0012-9658 .- 1939-9170. ; 103:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 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 weight, number of fruits and kg per hectare, 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), Northern America (60), Latin America and the Caribbean (29), Asia (20), Oceania (10), and Africa (7). Sampling spans three decades and is concentrated on 2001-05 (21 studies), 2006-10 (40), 2011-15 (88), and 2016-20 (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). This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
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| 3. |
- Albrecht, Matthias, et al.
(författare)
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The effectiveness of flower strips and hedgerows on pest control, pollination services and crop yield : a quantitative synthesis
- 2020
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Ingår i: Ecology Letters. - : Wiley. - 1461-023X .- 1461-0248. ; 23:10, s. 1488-1498
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Floral plantings are promoted to foster ecological intensification of agriculture through provisioning of ecosystem services. However, a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of different floral plantings, their characteristics and consequences for crop yield is lacking. Here we quantified the impacts of flower strips and hedgerows on pest control (18 studies) and pollination services (17 studies) in adjacent crops in North America, Europe and New Zealand. Flower strips, but not hedgerows, enhanced pest control services in adjacent fields by 16% on average. However, effects on crop pollination and yield were more variable. Our synthesis identifies several important drivers of variability in effectiveness of plantings: pollination services declined exponentially with distance from plantings, and perennial and older flower strips with higher flowering plant diversity enhanced pollination more effectively. These findings provide promising pathways to optimise floral plantings to more effectively contribute to ecosystem service delivery and ecological intensification of agriculture in the future.
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| 4. |
- Alejandre, Elizabeth M., et al.
(författare)
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Characterization Factors to Assess Land Use Impacts on Pollinator Abundance in Life Cycle Assessment
- 2023
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Ingår i: Environmental Science and Technology. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 0013-936X .- 1520-5851. ; 57:8, s. 3445-3454
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- While wild pollinators play a key role in global food production, their assessment is currently missing from the most commonly used environmental impact assessment method, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This is mainly due to constraints in data availability and compatibility with LCA inventories. To target this gap, relative pollinator abundance estimates were obtained with the use of a Delphi assessment, during which 25 experts, covering 16 nationalities and 45 countries of expertise, provided scores for low, typical, and high expected abundance associated with 24 land use categories. Based on these estimates, this study presents a set of globally generic characterization factors (CFs) that allows translating land use into relative impacts to wild pollinator abundance. The associated uncertainty of the CFs is presented along with an illustrative case to demonstrate the applicability in LCA studies. The CFs based on estimates that reached consensus during the Delphi assessment are recommended as readily applicable and allow key differences among land use types to be distinguished. The resulting CFs are proposed as the first step for incorporating pollinator impacts in LCA studies, exemplifying the use of expert elicitation methods as a useful tool to fill data gaps that constrain the characterization of key environmental impacts.
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| 5. |
- Blasi, Maria, et al.
(författare)
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Evaluating predictive performance of statistical models explaining wild bee abundance in a mass-flowering crop
- 2021
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Ingår i: Ecography. - : Wiley. - 0906-7590 .- 1600-0587. ; 44:4, s. 525-536
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Wild bee populations are threatened by current agricultural practices in many parts of the world, which may put pollination services and crop yields at risk. Loss of pollination services can potentially be predicted by models that link bee abundances with landscape-scale land-use, but there is little knowledge on the degree to which these statistical models are transferable across time and space. This study assesses the transferability of models for wild bee abundance in a mass-flowering crop across space (from one region to another) and across time (from one year to another). The models used existing data on bumblebee and solitary bee abundance in winter oilseed rape fields, together with high-resolution land-use crop-cover and semi-natural habitats data, from studies conducted in five different regions located in four countries (Sweden, Germany, Netherlands and the UK), in three different years (2011, 2012, 2013). We developed a hierarchical model combining all studies and evaluated the transferability using cross-validation. We found that both the landscape-scale cover of mass-flowering crops and permanent semi-natural habitats, including grasslands and forests, are important drivers of wild bee abundance in all regions. However, while the negative effect of increasing mass-flowering crops on the density of the pollinators is consistent between studies, the direction of the effect of semi-natural habitat is variable between studies. The transferability of these statistical models is limited, especially across regions, but also across time. Our study demonstrates the limits of using statistical models in conjunction with widely available land-use crop-cover classes for extrapolating pollinator density across years and regions, likely in part because input variables such as cover of semi-natural habitats poorly capture variability in pollinator resources between regions and years.
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| 6. |
- Cole, Lorna J., et al.
(författare)
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A critical analysis of the potential for EU Common Agricultural Policy measures to support wild pollinators on farmland
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of Applied Ecology. - : Wiley. - 0021-8901 .- 1365-2664. ; 57:4, s. 681-694
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Agricultural intensification and associated loss of high-quality habitats are key drivers of insect pollinator declines. With the aim of decreasing the environmental impact of agriculture, the 2014 EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) defined a set of habitat and landscape features (Ecological Focus Areas: EFAs) farmers could select from as a requirement to receive basic farm payments. To inform the post-2020 CAP, we performed a European-scale evaluation to determine how different EFA options vary in their potential to support insect pollinators under standard and pollinator-friendly management, as well as the extent of farmer uptake. A structured Delphi elicitation process engaged 22 experts from 18 European countries to evaluate EFAs options. By considering life cycle requirements of key pollinating taxa (i.e. bumble bees, solitary bees and hoverflies), each option was evaluated for its potential to provide forage, bee nesting sites and hoverfly larval resources. EFA options varied substantially in the resources they were perceived to provide and their effectiveness varied geographically and temporally. For example, field margins provide relatively good forage throughout the season in Southern and Eastern Europe but lacked early-season forage in Northern and Western Europe. Under standard management, no single EFA option achieved high scores across resource categories and a scarcity of late season forage was perceived. Experts identified substantial opportunities to improve habitat quality by adopting pollinator-friendly management. Improving management alone was, however, unlikely to ensure that all pollinator resource requirements were met. Our analyses suggest that a combination of poor management, differences in the inherent pollinator habitat quality and uptake bias towards catch crops and nitrogen-fixing crops severely limit the potential of EFAs to support pollinators in European agricultural landscapes. Policy Implications. To conserve pollinators and help protect pollination services, our expert elicitation highlights the need to create a variety of interconnected, well-managed habitats that complement each other in the resources they offer. To achieve this the Common Agricultural Policy post-2020 should take a holistic view to implementation that integrates the different delivery vehicles aimed at protecting biodiversity (e.g. enhanced conditionality, eco-schemes and agri-environment and climate measures). To improve habitat quality we recommend an effective monitoring framework with target-orientated indicators and to facilitate the spatial targeting of options collaboration between land managers should be incentivised.
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| 7. |
- Eeraerts, Maxime, et al.
(författare)
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Pollination deficits and their relation with insect pollinator visitation are cultivar-dependent in an entomophilous crop
- 2024
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Ingår i: Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment. - 0167-8809. ; 369
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Insects contribute considerably to global crop pollination, with pollination deficits being documented for multiple entomophilous or pollinator-dependent crops. Different cultivars of crops are being cultivated within and across production regions, so it is essential to understand the cultivar variability of pollination deficits. Here, we used a dataset from 286 sites from multiple production regions to develop a synthesis on pollination deficits in two widely cultivated highbush blueberry cultivars, ‘Bluecrop’ and ‘Duke’. Additionally, we determined if bee visitation or bee richness reduces pollination deficits in these cultivars. On average, neither cultivar showed pollination deficits regarding fruit set. However, for ‘Bluecrop’ we found pollination deficits for berry weight and seed set, which was not the case for ‘Duke’. Increasing total bee visitation reduced pollination deficits of both berry weight and seed set for ‘Bluecrop’. More specifically, a non-linear, negative exponential model best predicted this relation between bee visitation and pollination deficits. Our results highlight that pollination deficits and responses to pollinator visitation are variable between different cultivars of a single crop, which suggests opportunities to use certain cultivars that are less dependent on insect-mediated pollination in landscapes and regions where pollination services have been compromised. In addition, the non-linear response between bee visitation and pollination deficits suggests that optimal bee visitation rates need to be determined to improve pollination management and crop yield and to support accurate economic valuations of pollination services.
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| 8. |
- Eeraerts, Maxime, et al.
(författare)
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Synthesis of highbush blueberry pollination research reveals region-specific differences in the contributions of honeybees and wild bees
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of Applied Ecology. - 0021-8901. ; 60:12, s. 2528-2539
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Highbush blueberry production has expanded worldwide in recent decades. To safeguard future yields, it is essential to understand if insect pollination is limiting current blueberry production and which insects contribute to pollination in different production regions. We present a systematic review including a set of meta-analyses on insect-mediated pollination in highbush blueberry. We summarize the geographic distribution of research, the abundance of different pollinator taxa and their relative pollination contributions. Using raw data from 21 studies, totalling 496 site replicates, we determine the degree of pollination service and pollen limitation (i.e. combining open pollination levels with experimental bagged and/or hand pollination treatments), as well as the contribution of honeybees and wild bees to pollination (i.e. observational, open pollination). Most studies originate from North America, focusing on only a few cultivars. Honeybees are the dominant pollinator, and wild bees are occasionally abundant. Wild bees are more efficient pollinators on a single-visit basis compared to honeybees, which increases their relative pollination contribution compared to their relative abundance. Insect-mediated pollination services increased blueberry fruit set, berry weight and seed set (R2 values: 64.8%, 75.9% and 75.2% respectively). We often detected pollen limitation, indicated by an increase in fruit set, berry weight and seed set (R2: 10.1%, 18.2% and 21.5%, respectively), with additional hand pollination. Increasing visitation of honeybees and wild bees contributed to blueberry pollination by increasing fruit set (R2: 5.4% and 3.5%), berry weight (R2: 6.5% and 2.8%) and seed set (R2: 6.4% and 3.8%) respectively. Bee contributions to fruit set and berry weight were variable across regions. Synthesis and application: A diverse community of insects, primarily bees, contributes to highbush blueberry pollination and yield. However, pollination deficits are common. The finding that both honeybees and wild bees enhance pollination highlights the possibility of adopting different management strategies that utilize honeybees, wild bees or both depending on the specific context and region. This further emphasizes the general importance of conserving pollinator health and diversity. Our synthesis highlights data gaps and areas for future research to better understand the pollination contribution of different pollinators to crops that are expanding globally.
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| 9. |
- Ekroos, Johan, et al.
(författare)
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High land-use intensity in grasslands constrains wild bee species richness in Europe
- 2020
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Ingår i: Biological Conservation. - : Elsevier BV. - 0006-3207. ; 241
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There is widespread concern regarding declines in bee populations given their importance for the functioning of both natural and managed ecosystems. An increasing number of studies find negative relations between bee species richness and simplification of agricultural landscapes, but the role of land-use intensity and its relative importance compared to landscape simplification remain less clear. We compared the relative effects of nitrogen inputs, as a proxy for land-use intensity, and proportion of natural and semi-natural habitat, as a measure of landscape complexity on total bee species richness, rare species richness and dominant crop-visiting species richness. We used data from 282 grasslands across five countries, covering the entire range of low intensity, no-input systems, to high-input sites (>400 kg N/ha/year). We found consistent negative impacts of increasing land-use intensity at a regional scale on total bee species richness and dominant crop-visiting species across Europe, but no such effects of landscape complexity. In contrast, the richness of rare bee species was not significantly related to increasing land-use intensity. Nevertheless, based on species accumulation curves, grasslands with no nitrogen inputs had higher total bee richness and higher shares of rare species compared with sites with high nitrogen inputs (>125 kg N/ha/year). Our results highlight the importance of retaining grasslands characterised by low land-use intensity across agricultural landscapes to promote bee diversity.
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| 10. |
- Hutchinson, Louise A., et al.
(författare)
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Using ecological and field survey data to establish a national list of the wild bee pollinators of crops
- 2021
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Ingår i: Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment. - : Elsevier BV. - 0167-8809 .- 1873-2305. ; 315
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The importance of wild bees for crop pollination is well established, but less is known about which species contribute to service delivery to inform agricultural management, monitoring and conservation. Using sites in Great Britain as a case study, we use a novel qualitative approach combining ecological information and field survey data to establish a national list of crop pollinating bees for four economically important crops (apple, field bean, oilseed rape and strawberry). A traits data base was used to establish potential pollinators, and combined with field data to identify both dominant crop flower visiting bee species and other species that could be important crop pollinators, but which are not presently sampled in large numbers on crops flowers. Whilst we found evidence that a small number of common, generalist species make a disproportionate contribution to flower visits, many more species were identified as potential pollinators, including rare and specialist species. Furthermore, we found evidence of substantial variation in the bee communities of different crops. Establishing a national list of crop pollinators is important for practitioners and policy makers, allowing targeted management approaches for improved ecosystem services, conservation and species monitoring. Data can be used to make recommendations about how pollinator diversity could be promoted in agricultural landscapes. Our results suggest agri-environment schemes need to support a higher diversity of species than at present, notably of solitary bees. Management would also benefit from targeting specific species to enhance crop pollination services to particular crops. Whilst our study is focused upon Great Britain, our methodology can easily be applied to other countries, crops and groups of pollinating insects.
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