Biology subjects

Clare, E.

Publications and source records attributed to Clare, E..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Factors Influencing Emerald Ash Borer Ecological Interactions

Emerald ash borer beetles (Agrilus planipennis) in North America are a destructive invasive species that increase tree mortality continent-wide, resulting in major ecological and economic impacts. Trees that are infested experience mortality rates which can exceed 99%, disrupting ecological communities and threatening the $218 billion forestry industry in North America. Given the ecological and economic impact of these pests, we seek to identify biological interactions and gain a better understanding of what ecological factors might influence these relationships. We use DNA metabarcoding from multiple markers to analyze the fungal, parasitic, plant, and microbial interactions of these beetles, and assess the relative importance of life stage (e.g., larvae, pupae, and adults), collection location, habitat, and date on the detection of ecological interactions. We detected 30 different taxonomic orders including 29 order-level interactions in larva1-stage individuals (3 animal, 17 bacteria, and 9 fungi), 64 in larva2-stage individuals (8 animal, 24 bacteria, and 32 fungi), 10 in larva3-stage individuals (2 animal, 3 bacteria, and 5 fungi), 74 in the pupae (5 animal, 31 bacteria, and 38 fungi), and 82 in the adult beetles (4 animal, 48 bacteria, 29 fungi, and 1 parasitic alveolate). These detections include several likely agents of biocontrol including the known commercially available Beauveria fungus, and several potential parasites including Wolbachia and ichneumonid wasps. A random forest model suggests the detection of interactions is best predicted by collection date and life stage, with interactions more likely to be detected in pupal samples which may be the ideal target for future analysis, where cost and time constraints prevent the more thorough analysis of all life stages.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2025

Innovative airborne DNA approach for monitoring honey bee foraging and health

Environmental DNA refers to genetic material collected from the environment and not directly from an organism of interest. It is best known as a tool in aquatic ecology but eDNA has been found associated with almost every substrate examined including soils, surfaces, and riding around on other animals. The collection of airborne eDNA is one of the most recent advances used to monitor a variety of organisms, including plants, animals, and microorganisms. Evidence suggests a high turnover rate providing a recent signal for the presence of DNA associated with an organism. Here, we test whether biological material carried in air in honey bee colonies can be used to evaluate recent foraging and colony health. We sampled air using purpose built "bee safe" filters operating for 5-6 hours at each colony and successfully recovered plant, fungal and microbial DNA from the air within honey bee colonies over a 3-week pilot period. From these data we identified the core honey bee microbiome and plant interaction data representing foraging behaviour. We calculated beta diversity to estimate the effects of apiary sites and sampling date on data recovery. We observed that variance in ITS data was more influenced by sampling date. Given that honey bees are generalist pollinators our ability to detect temporal signals in associated plant sequence data suggest this method opens new avenues into the ecological analysis of short term foraging behavior at the colony level. In comparison variance in microbial 16S sequencing data was more influenced by sampling location. As the assessment of colony health needs to be localized, spatial variance in these data indicate this may be an important tool in detecting infection. This pilot study demonstrates that colony air filtration has strong potential for the rapid screening of honey bee health and for the study of bee behaviour

ecology↗

bioRxiv2022

Phylogenetic and Ecological Trends in Specialization: Disentangling the Drivers of Ectoparasite Host Specificity

O_LIEcological specialization reflects both evolutionary and ecological processes. For parasitic taxa, ecological specialization can be assessed as the degree to which a parasite species will associate with certain host species, a property known as host specificity. C_LIO_LIEctoparasitic bat flies have been previously reported as highly host specific, presumably due to a history of coevolution with their bat hosts. However, there is conflicting evidence of coevolution between bats and bat flies. Resource-driven competition between parasite individuals and between species may also be important in explaining patterns of bat fly specificity. C_LIO_LITo test the importance of evolutionary and ecological factors on bat fly specificity, we collected and identified 21 bat fly species from 16 host bat species from the State of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. We generated a bat fly species phylogeny from molecular data, estimated d specialization values (a metric of specificity), and used linear and cophylogenetic models to compare the importance of various drivers of parasite ecological specialization. C_LIO_LIWe found that bat fly co-occurrence frequency (a proxy for interspecific competition) and mean infection intensity (a proxy for intraspecific competition) best predicted patterns of bat fly specialization. Co-occurrence frequency had a significantly negative association with specialization, while mean infection intensity has a significantly positive association with specialization. Coevolutionary congruence had a small effect size and did not significantly predict parasite specialization. C_LIO_LIWe found multiple shifts toward more generalized host niches across the bat fly phylogeny. Our results suggest that ecological processes such as resource-driven competition may be more important than evolutionary processes in shaping bat fly host specialization networks. C_LIO_LIBat flies showed variable degrees of host specialization, parasitized phylogenetically distant host species, and showed low phylogenetic congruence to their hosts. This suggests that as a group, bat flies may show flexibility in their host preference phenotypes and may change their host associations in the face of environmental disturbance. C_LI

ecology↗