Who is a scientist, I am a scientist: the bees of Blackawton

In discussions of the larger societal implications of scientific findings, the question of who is a scientist is frequently asked. I've talked with with creationists who invoke the authority of someone who has a PhD in a scientific discipline and happens to share their belief of supernatural origins, as a scientific authority. Does the fact that I have a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology make me scientist or is being scientist something more?

This is an important question. It goes to the core of whose authority we believe for public discussion of such issues as climate change, evolution, risks of vaccines, and so on. Regardless of how we define 'scientist', a scientist participates in science by publishing peer-reviewed research articles in scientific publications. This notion of who is a scientist has been enjoyably stretched by the publication of a paper in Biology Letters by a group of elementary school children from Blackawton, UK. In consultation with a academic scientist and under the supervision of teachers, 25 8-10 year olds devised and carried out an experiment on bee visual perception and behavior, and wrote up their results into a publishable manuscript.

The students trained bees by offering them nectar rewards in different color containers. They then allowed these trained bees to forage in multicolored arenas and they conclusively show that the bees unambiguously select the colored containers they were trained on. Bess learn and adapt their behavior based on previous experience.

Publishing a paper by a group of children may sound like a gimmick, but the study is very interesting. The commentary from the journal says it best: "The children's findings show that bees are able to alter their foraging behaviour based on previously learned colours and pattern cues in a complex scene consisting of a (local) pattern within a larger (global) pattern . As there has been little testing of bees learning colour patterns at small and large scales, the results can add considerably to our understanding of insect behaviour."

The paper is extremely enjoyable to read and will have you chuckling to yourself. Sincerity pours from the words and I was left wondering if I could have reasoned so well at that age. The children develop hypotheses using information available to them, such as watching Dave Letterman's 'Stupid Dog Tricks'. Reading this article made me realize why I love being scientist. The students note that "This experiment is important, because, as far as we know, no one in history (including adults) has done this experiment before" and because they were given the opportunity to carryout this study they "also discovered that science is cool and fun because you get to do stuff that no one has ever done before". Too true. I could not have said it better myself.

Being scientist can mean a lot of things, it can mean knowledge (which the Latin origin, Scientia means), it can mean training and acquired skills, but at its core, being a scientist means conducting research, testing hypotheses and writing publications that are deemed acceptable by other scientists. Therefore the children of Blackawton are scientists, I am a scientist.

Blackawton, P., Airzee, S., Allen, A., Baker, S., Berrow, A., Blair, C., Churchill, M., Coles, J., Cumming, R., Fraquelli, L., Hackford, C., Hinton Mellor, A., Hutchcroft, M., Ireland, B., Jewsbury, D., Littlejohns, A., Littlejohns, G., Lotto, M., McKeown, J., O'Toole, A., Richards, H., Robbins-Davey, L., Roblyn, S., Rodwell-Lynn, H., Schenck, D., Springer, J., Wishy, A., Rodwell-Lynn, T., Strudwick, D., & Lotto, R. (2010). Blackawton bees Biology Letters DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2010.1056

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Plant genotypic diversity supports pollinator diversity

Research over the past 20 years has shown that plant communities with greater diversity maintain higher productivity, greater stability and support more diverse arthropod assemblages. More recently, several experiments have shown that interspecific diversity (namely genotypic differences) also affects community functioning. Pollination is often considered an essential function, and does plant genotypic diversity affect pollinator diversity and frequency?

In a recent paper in PLoS ONE, Genung and colleagues test whether plant genotypic diversity affects pollinator visits. They use an experimental system set-up by Greg Crutsinger that combines multiple genotypes of the goldenrod, Solidago altissima, and record pollinator visits over two years. Experimental plots contained 1, 3, 6, or 12 genotypes of S. altissima. After accounting for differences in abundance, Genung et al. show that as genotypic diversity increases, both pollinator richness and number of visits to the plot significantly increase. This increase is greater than expectations of randomly simulated assemblages combining proportional pollinator visits from monocultures.

The previous research at the species-level has made a persuasive rationale to protect species diversity in order to maintain ecosystem functioning. Now, research like this is making a case that there are consequences for not explicitly considering genetic diversity in conservation planning and habitat restoration.

Genung, M., Lessard, J., Brown, C., Bunn, W., Cregger, M., Reynolds, W., Felker-Quinn, E., Stevenson, M., Hartley, A., Crutsinger, G., Schweitzer, J., & Bailey, J. (2010). Non-Additive Effects of Genotypic Diversity Increase Floral Abundance and Abundance of Floral Visitors PLoS ONE, 5 (1) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0008711

Exotic plants integrate into plant-pollinator networks

At almost any spot on the globe, there are species present that are not native to that locale, having been transported by human activities. Whether and how exotic species impact communities is a multifaceted problem that requires understanding the multitude of direct and indirect species interactions that occur. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, B, Montserrat Vila and colleagues asked if exotic plants where integrated into plant-pollinator networks, and whether this integration had any observable impacts on these networks. This is an important question, as most ecological theory predicts that plant-pollinator networks are actually quite resilient to perturbations since most associations tend to be between generalists as opposed to the more susceptible specialists.

They studied invaded plant communities across Europe, observing pollinator visits to flowers in multiple 50 x 50 m plots. They calculated connectance as the number of interactions standardized by network size. They showed that exotics fully integrated into plant-pollinator networks. Exotic species accounted for 42% of all pollinator visits and 24% of all network connections -a testament to the overall abundance of exotics in many communities. However, these exotics did not affect overall changes in network connectedness, revealing that these networks are quite robust to invasions.

That said, researchers must now ask if this is true in networks that do contain high numbers of specialists (e.g., orchids) or if the relative few specialists in generalist-dominated systems are more susceptible to changes from exotics.

Vila, M., Bartomeus, I., Dietzsch, A., Petanidou, T., Steffan-Dewenter, I., Stout, J., & Tscheulin, T. (2009). Invasive plant integration into native plant-pollinator networks across Europe Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 276 (1674), 3887-3893 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.1076