Plant-pollinator interactions over time: Pollen metabarcoding from bees in a historic collection.

ABSTRACT: Pollination is a key component in agricultural food production and ecosystem maintenance, with plant-pollinator interactions an important research theme in ecological and evolutionary studies. Natural history collections provide unique access to samples collected at different spatial and temporal scales. Identification of the plant origins of pollen trapped on the bodies of pollinators in these collections provides insight into historic plant communities and pollinators' preferred floral taxa. In this study, pollen was sampled from Megachile venusta Smith bees from the National Collection of Insects, South Africa, spanning 93 years. Three barcode regions, the internal transcribed spacer 1 and 2 (ITS1 and ITS2) and ribulose-1,5-biphosphate carboxylase (rbcL), were sequenced fr

SUBMITTER: Gous A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6346658 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature