Ecology

We found a significant positive relationship between pollen- and plant richness regardless of differences in plant diversity, landscape structure and environmental conditions between the two study regions. This finding represents a major step stone towards more accurate paleoecological reconstructions of plant diversity in temperate Central Europe, as previous studies on this topic have mostly been conducted in boreal and boreal-nemoral zones8,11, in high mountain habitats10 or in southern Europe9,12.Methodological differences e.g., in diversity indices, data transformations or sample sizes used make comparison between studies difficult. Nevertheless, the strongest relationships seem to be found when habitats with contrasting patterns of plant diversity are compared, such as forests and alpine vegetation7 or forests, peatlands and grasslands11. Also in our study, we found the strongest correlations when complete datasets combining forested and open habitats were analysed together for both study regions. As it is well known that plant richness is generally lower in forests than in open landscapes across temperate and boreal regions28, this finding may seem rather trivial. However, it is important for paleoecological reconstruction because Holocene changes in diversity in temperate regions were largely driven by changes in the relative abundance of major habitat types (such as forests, grasslands, wetlands and man-made habitats), and not just by changes in species richness within these habitats5,6.Regarding individual habitats, the pollen-plant diversity relationship is often rather strong and significant in grasslands and other open habitats8,11; for example the WCM open-habitat subset in this study. Open habitats are generally richer in species, thus providing a longer gradient of species richness compensating for the taxonomical imprecision of the pollen analysis. In forested sites with less species, we found mostly non-significant relationships. Moreover, two other factors may play a role.First, high pollen productivity of trees biases the diversity relationship according to the studies from northern Europe16. However, a study from an elevational transect in southern Norway showed that the strongest bias in representation occurs only in the boreal forest biome, which is dominated by high pollen producers10. Our dominant vegetation component, Picea and Quercus, have intermediate to high pollen productivity (2–2.5), whereas true high pollen producers such as Alnus and Betula ( > 3) are less abundant in our study area (Supplementary Fig. S2). Adjustment of pollen counts by PPEs led to stronger relationship between pollen and floristic richness only in the WCM open-habitat subset (Supplementary Fig. S4).Second, interception of pollen by the tree canopies29 and subsequent washout to the forest floor affects the diversity relationship of forest sites more than pollen productivity. This noise described also as a vegetation filtering30 can be illustrated in our dataset by pollen of long-distance transport from Ambrosia artemisiifolia-type, which has the closest source populations ca. 50 km south-eastwards from WCM region31; or pollen of Artemisia, growing in open habitats. Both pollen taxa are more abundant in the forest than in open sites (Supplementary Fig. S3).Regarding the application of these results for the interpretation of fossil record, we suggest to consider only marked changes of pollen richness in the past and to avoid overinterpretation of small differences, as the non-significant relationships obtained in both forest datasets suggest some limitations of the method.We showed that the pollen-plant diversity relationship may be at least partly disentangled by knowing the exact spatial position of plant species in broader surroundings of the pollen sampling sites. Changes in the relationship with changing spatial scale are largely driven by the numbers of species newly appearing as the radius of surveyed area increases, especially as new habitats are added (Fig. 5, Supplementary Fig. S5). Remarkably, in the BMH region it increases with distance, whereas the opposite trend was observed in the WCM region. This discrepancy may be explained by non-uniform richness patterns in different habitats and by different landscape structure (i.e. spatial arrangement of different habitats) in the two study regions.At open-habitat sites in the WCM area, most species generally appeared within the first 40 m. This observation is consistent with the knowledge of extremely high fine-scale plant diversity in the local steppic meadows, where a substantial portion of the species pool occurs on a scale of tens of square meters32. Moreover, the grain size of the habitat mosaic in the WCM region is finer than in the BMH region. Therefore, the closest pollen-plant diversity relationship across habitats in the WCM region is achieved over shorter distances. Although habitats such as built-up areas and roads occurring at distances greater than 40 m may be species-rich and compositionally different from the grasslands and forests, it appears that high fine-scale plant diversity (in our case in WCM open-habitat subset) limits the influence of the surrounding landscape on pollen richness and reduces the source area of pollen richness. Several studies of the relevant source area of pollen report analogous results33,34,35. A weakening relationship between pollen diversity and plant diversity with distance has also been observed in the Mediterranean region9, although their interpretations are limited by field survey methodology.The appearance of open habitats within forests led to the increase of species numbers and the local maxima of adjusted R2 in both regions. While in the BMH forest the appearance of forest roads at about 70 m was crucial, meadows and orchards at about 250 m played a similar role in the WCM forest subset. In the WCM open-habitat subset diversity patterns in the first tens of metres were crucial, while in the BMH open-habitat subset increased correlation of floristic and pollen richness appeared only at 400 and 550 m; at this distance many species appeared due to the frequent transition of meadow complexes to shrubby habitats and built-up areas. Also other studies from semi-open landscapes found a high correlation between pollen richness and landscape openness17,26,27.Estimating the source area of pollen variance as a regression of pollen and floristic variance implies that the resulting distance of 100–250 m represents all datasets. Although they differ in species richness, openness and habitats, the relationship between variances is fairly linear. The exception is the WCM open-habitat subset suggesting that the spatial scale at which the pollen variance corresponds to the floristic variance cannot be generalized.The strong effect of high pollen richness in the WCM open-habitat subset is also visible in the comparison of pollen and floristic variance. At 150 m, the WCM open-habitat subset had much lower floristic variance than the other subsets. Floristic variance in this subset corresponding to the pollen variance and the pattern of the other datasets lay at 6 m (Fig. 6b). Again, this may be caused by the high fine-scale diversity of the meadows, which include most pollen types present in the surrounding landscape. Only a few new species appeared in broader surroundings and at 150 m, WCM open habitats are more similar than other analysed habitats. The fact that extremely high alpha diversity is compensated by low beta diversity has already been reported from the open habitats of the White Carpathians36. The linearity and the significance of the variance relationship within the rest of the datasets indicate robustness and possible applicability to a variety of fossil records.The mechanism of establishing the source area of pollen variance was similar to that mentioned for the source area of pollen richness. The appearance of new habitats with new species (Fig. 5) like open habitat for forest sites (WCM forest subset) or built-up areas for open sites (BMH open-habitat subset), caused small to negligible increases of floristic variance. Moreover, the high yet insignificant relationship of the variances at the distance between 250 and 600 m (Fig. 6a) corresponds to the distance of the second range of fit between floristic and pollen richness (Fig. 4a).Beta diversity, understood as directional turnover (temporal or spatial), is becoming more frequently used in pollen analysis22,24 than beta diversity as a non-directional variation. According to Nieto-Lugilde et al.25 pollen-based turnover correlates with forest-inventory-based turnover. We extend this finding from woody taxa to all species and from directional turnover to non-directional variance. Moreover, forest sites with high contributions to pollen beta diversity also show an increased contribution to floristic beta diversity (Fig. 4b).The reference data on plant diversity report 1477 species in 15 mapping squares covered by our survey for the BMH region and 2045 species in 14 squares for the WCM region37. It means that we recorded 54.1 and 53.7%, respectively, of the known regional species pool in the two regions. We consider this as a rather good result and the close agreement in representativeness between the two regions speaks for consistency in data quality between the datasets. We advise that future studies covering wider areas and various biomes should preferentially use high-quality floristic data collected in targeted field surveys rather than database data or data from simplified field surveys. Only then we will be able to understand the pollen-plant diversity relationships more realistically and in a spatially explicit manner.In order to interpret fossil pollen richness in the light of our present results, we need to consider landscape openness, which can be roughly inferred from the ratio of arboreal and non-arboreal pollen. Variation of pollen richness during the forest phases of the records should be interpreted more carefully, especially in cases of low variation. In all other cases, the pollen richness is significantly linked to the plant richness within a distance of ten to several hundreds of meters, depending on the distance of the expected species-rich patches. More

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Project 1: mesocosm field experimentsMesocosm experiments took place at Lockwood Farm located in Hamden, Connecticut. Individual mesocosms were composed of black 20 L cylindrical plastic containers filled with 12 L tap water and seeded with 10 mg of a 3:2 ratio liver powder/brewer’s yeast mixture and 1 g of grass hay. Drain-holes were drilled into the sides of each container 5 mm from the 12 L surface to allow flooding for Aedes spp. egg emergence and to allow overflow beyond this level due to precipitation. Four experimental mesocosm clusters were dispersed throughout the Lockwood Farm in microhabitats previously sampled in Eastwood et al.22. Clusters contained 4 mesocosms spaced 3 m apart in a 2 × 2 grid. We utilized four L. sphaericus treatment levels in each cluster: no L. sphaericus, the LC50 (0.053 ITU/ml) and LC95 (1.0 ITU/ml) for Culex pipiens derived from Burtis et al.3, and the label rate of L. sphaericus (~ 1.2 ITU/ml). All treatments were derived from VectoLex WDG. Prior to insecticide application, we prepared 1 L of a 1000 ITU/ml stock solution. To inoculate each mesocosm, we measured the depth of the container’s water column, calculated water volume, and applied the appropriate amount of stock to achieve the target LC value. Replicate insecticide treatments were randomized within each cluster, and insecticides were applied 30-days post mesocosm seeding with nutrients. All mesocosms in each cluster were rotated within the 2 × 2 grid each week. Two clusters were then randomly chosen for a second application of L. sphaericus 30-days post initial insecticide application.To sample the larval habitat of each mesocosm, we performed a figure-8 sweep with an aquarium fish net (4 × 3-in. opening, Penn-Plax) each Monday and Thursday of the week for each week of the experiment. Sweep contents were washed from the net into a white photo development pan, and pupae were removed for in-lab identification after eclosion following a dichotomous key23. All larvae were then returned to the mesocosm. This sampling protocol minimized destruction of larval habitats and influence of interspecific interactions due to removal sampling.In addition to sampling containers for pupae, we collected water samples from each container for an in-lab bioassay to determine the realized mortality of the larval environment. Due to time constraints of the field crew, a 50% randomized sample of containers were sampled on Monday with the remaining 50% sampled on Thursday of each sampling week. Bioassay procedures followed McMillan et al.24 for Cx. pipiens with the addition of screening mortality in CAES’ Ae. albopictus colonies. We finally performed in-lab susceptibility trials to L. sphaericus with larvae from CAES’ Cx. pipiens and Ae. albopictus colonies to confirm each species’ colony varied in their sensitivity to the product. Briefly, 15 3rd to 4th instar larvae of each species per replicate dose were exposed to a wide range of L. sphaericus concentrations and mortality was recorded 24-h post-exposure. Lethal concentrations were then estimated from a generalized linear model with mortality (corrected for mortality in untreated control replicates) as the response term and the log10-dose as the predictor term.Primary endpoints from the field experiment included the number and species identity of pupae collected from each mesocosm. We compared total weekly pupal collections per mesocosm using a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) framework with treatment level and cluster ID as fixed effects, species ID and week of collection as a random effect, and a Poisson-error distribution. We repeated this analysis excluding all collected Culex spp. to examine how the L. sphaericus treatments impacted the more tolerant Aedes spp. The primary endpoint for the mortality assays was the corrected larval mortality. We initially compared mortality using a species-specific GLMM with L. sphaericus treatment concentration and treatment period as fixed effects, week of collection as a random effect, and a binomial-error distribution. Preliminary analyses revealed negligible variance attributed to week of collection, so all subsequent models were a GLM. All analyses were performed in R V4.1.325 using the following packages: tidyverse26, gridExtra27, ggplot228, ggeffects29, and glmmTMB30.Project 2: laboratory competition assaysCompetition assays took place at CAES’ main facility in New Haven, CT. This facility contains an Ae. albopictus colony (founded circa 2014 from Stratford, CT) and a Cx. pipiens colony (founded circa 2018 from New Haven, CT;). Colony maintenance for each species was similar: larval rearing pans consisted of approx. 200 eggs (on papers, Ae. albopictus, or as egg rafts, Cx. pipiens) in ~ 2 L RO water and initiated with ~ 20 ml of a 1% 3:2 liver powder/brewer’s yeast slurry. Pans were held at 25.5 °C and 80% humidity and fed ~ 20 ml of the 1% slurry every other day. Pupae were removed to an eclosion chamber and adults were allowed access to 10% sucrose solution ad libitum. Aedes albopictus females were given access to defibrinated sheep’s blood (HemoStat©) through a Hemotek membrane feeder for 1 h every 2–3 weeks and moistened, fluted filter paper was provided to collect eggs. Culex pipiens females were given access to a live, restrained buttonquail overnight once per week and a small cup seeded with 5 ml 1% slurry and 15 RO ml water was provided to collect egg rafts. The use of buttonquail was reviewed and approved in accordance with CAES Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.We performed two experiments. All experiments consisted of the following treatments: variable ratios of Ae:Cx larvae and two L. sphaericus treatments (no treatment and 0.01 ITU/ml). Larval density (40 per container) remained constant across all replicate treatments, but Ae:Cx ratios varied from 40/0, 30/10, 20/20, 10/30, and 0/40. Nutrients supplied were a low concentration (3 mg larva−1) of a 3:2 liver powder/brewer’s yeast mix applied at the beginning of the experiment. Temperature was held constant at the colony maintenance level. Assays took place in 300 ml disposable plastic cups filled with 100 ml of RO water. The first experiments consisted of the addition of the 40 larvae as newly hatched individuals (+/− 1 day between species’ hatch) at the appropriate ratios, the larval diet, and the 0.01 ITU/ml concentration (diluted from a lab stock of 1000 ITU/ml). Assays were monitored daily until all larvae were dead and/or all larvae pupated. Experiment 2 consisted of the addition of only the Cx. pipiens larvae and the larval diet. After all Cx. pipiens had pupated, containers were treated with L. sphaericus and then the Ae. Albopictus larvae were added.Primary endpoints included species-specific pupation success. Preliminary analyses in a GLMM framework revealed negligible variance attributed to a replicate ID random effect; replicate as a random term also interfered with model convergence. Preliminary analyses further revealed there was neither a significant interaction nor an improvement in the Akaike Information Criterion between the L. sphaericus treatment and initial starting condition terms. Thus, we adopted a GLM rather than a GLMM framework in all further analyses, and species-specific mortality was analyzed as a binomial response term with treatment and initial starting conditions included as fixed effects All analyses were performed in R V4.1.325 using the following packages: tidyverse26, gridExtra27, and ggplot228. More

UAVs indeed proved to be a practical, efficient, and accurate tool in sampling insects within four different habitats in Quebec. Furthermore, different drone settings of speed, height, and net diameter may yield different insect orders, which can be useful in studies that aim to target specific insects. Nonetheless, only height, and not speed, net diameter or drone type influenced insect abundance. Compared with Lindgren funnels, drones were not only able to catch more insects in less time, but also a wider array of the insect community diversity.Our study successfully shows the promise of using drones to collect forest and wetland canopy arthropods. More arthropods were collected flying at zero meters (grazing the canopy) than flying at one meter, while different speed, net size and drone type had less of an effect on insect yield (Fig. 2). The one-meter setting was expected to yield different arthropod diversity, such as fewer terrestrial families (ex. Araneae) and more aerial families (ex. Diptera) compared to the grazing zero-meter setting. However, the proportions of the top three orders (Diptera, Hemiptera, and Araneae) were similar among settings (Fig. 3). The capture of arachnids at one meter above the canopy can be explained by webs that are attached to taller foliage in proximity to the area, or spiders ‘ballooning’ in the airspace on silk threads25. Because canopy height was not always uniform, flying while grazing the canopy underneath the drone was at times lower than other parts of the canopy. Another explanation could be jumping spiders (ex. family Salticidae) which have been found to react to a disturbance or threat by leaping, possibly into the drone net26. Though the main three orders were in similar proportion, the one-meter setting caught five fewer orders in total than the zero-meter setting did. Flying at one meter was the only setting that captured no insects of order Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, or Orthoptera, suggesting that these orders spend time in and among the wetland canopy, and are seldom above the grassy canopy (Fig. 3). Most importantly, this setting only caught nine insects total over all flights, revealing itself to be an inefficient method of insect collection. This can be due to the number of insects available to be collected at each height. When flying at one meter, the net has access to only aerial insects in flight above the canopy (ex. flies). Flying while grazing the canopy, however, gives the researcher access to the same aerial insects in flight above the canopy, but also aerial insects in flight within the canopy (ex. bees), aerial insects at rest on the canopy (ex. leafhoppers), and terrestrial insects on the canopy (ex. ants). Thus, flying the drone while grazing the canopy opens the possibility of capturing three more insect groups compared to flying above the canopy. It is also possible that there are indeed many insects to be caught solely in the airspace, but that the ideal height for collecting insects strictly above the canopy is either less than or greater than one meter—which is the only height above the canopy that we tested.This sampling period caught three total insects from order Odonata, with two of the three being caught with the 18-inch diameter net setting (Fig. 3). As these dragonflies are typically fast flyers and of large body size, perhaps the extra diameter of the larger net was helpful in increasing the chances of catching Odonates, though we do not have enough data to make solid conclusions. This would be a valuable line of future research for studies focused on dragonflies, or other large and fast-flying insects.Flying the drone and hanging sweep net at 20 km/hr yielded the highest number and proportion of insects in the order Hemiptera, which are often found at rest within the canopy27. We speculate that the faster speed of the drone striking the grassy canopy more swiftly, thus giving the insects resting on the grasses less of an opportunity to evade the threat of the approaching net. Future studies targeting the collection of true bugs should utilize a faster drone speed in flight to optimize yield.With 84% of insects found within the second layer of our net, we conclude that our novel net design with two layers of tulle is satisfactory in retaining insects and preventing most from escaping when landing the drone. In addition to the insects counted, we never witnessed any insects flying out during landing stages. We believe that our methodology of flying the drone in quickly and covering the opening of the net with cardboard before landing the drone, in addition to the extra layer of netting, was successful at retaining the insects caught. Determining how to fly the drone and net over the two forest canopy habitats was a challenge. When flying, it was impossible for the drone camera to look both forward—to see obstacles coming up, and downwards—to see how close the net was hanging regarding the top of the canopy. For this reason, we used a second drone as a spotter for the first, the pilot of which could give instructions on moving up or down. Forest canopies were particularly difficult, as the height from one tree to the next was always different, the drone had to be constantly adjusted. We experienced many snags on branches, although they were not damaging to the net or drone. Once we became comfortable flying the drone low enough to graze the canopy, snagging became a common occurrence that was easily remedied. In fact, snagging the net probably helped in the collection of insects on those branches—a technique that could be honed and used in future studies using nets and drones over forest canopies.Over our 12 days of sampling habitat canopies with drones, we were able to determine that wetlands had the highest diversity and abundance of the four habitats examined, with lake habitats showing the lowest Shannon-Weiner Diversity index (H’), and the highest Pielou’s evenness index (J). It is unsurprising that lakes showed the most even distribution of families, as is often the case with habitats having low species richness, as there are less competitors that could dominate the habitat28. Habitat, humidity, and temperature were the most important variables affecting drone insect yield, with habitat being the common variable in all high scoring models. Wetlands had by the far the most insects collected, in addition to the highest diversity and species richness. This can be explained simply by the plant composition in wetlands compared to the other habitats. While coniferous and deciduous forests are dominated by a few species (and lakes have little to no vegetation over the water) wetlands can host a wide variety of plant species. Because insect diversity correlates with plant richness and abundance, wetlands can provide shelter and sustenance for many more groups of insects that the other habitats we studied29.Lindgren funnels disproportionately collected insects from order Coleoptera (Fig. 7). Although Lindgren funnels have been used in papers reporting results focused on insects of orders Hemiptera30,31,32,33 and Diptera34,35,36, it is unclear whether some were targeted studies or all simply bycatch of the funnel from other experiments. Instead, Lindgren funnels are overwhelmingly used in Coleoptera studies as the funnels resemble a tree and attracts various wood-boring beetles37,38,39,40,41. This attraction explains the large number and proportion of beetles caught in funnels in this study. However, diversity indices show that in three of four habitats, drones collect a higher diversity sample than the Lindgren funnels (Tables 1 and 2). Thus, though Lindgren funnels are undoubtedly effective at collecting beetles from the environment, our results indicate that the drone collection method is preferable when seeking an accurate representation of the insect diversity of the habitat. Studies focused on Coleoptera could also employ this method, which would be helpful in determining the status and proportion of beetles within the population and compared to other insect orders.In addition to the larger diversity collected by drones, the temporal advantage of this technique over the funnels can not be understated. During our study, it took three Lindgren funnel traps established for seven days to collect a total of 36 insects at the wetland sites (0.001 insect collected per minute). Comparatively, at the same height and placement, drones were able to collect 391 insects in only a combined 36 min (10.9 insects collected per minute) (Fig. 7). This large difference in both yield and time scale demonstrates that the drone collection method is vastly more efficient at arthropod sampling compared to the Lindgren funnels.While this study was successful at validating the usefulness of drones in canopy entomology studies and insect collection in general, it does have its limitations. Optimal drone settings were only examined at wetland grassy canopy sites, and it is possible that the drone might perform differently within different habitats. For example, grazing the canopy at 20 km/hr might result in high insect yield at wetlands, where the lack of obstacles made it relatively easy to fly quickly. But the same settings may be unrealistic and prone to net snagging when sampling over other habitats, such as the coniferous forest canopy. Furthermore, Lindgren funnels were an acceptable comparison to drone collection for yield and diversity at some habitats, however it was impossible to get the funnels up into the canopy where sampling took place at coniferous and deciduous sites. There is no doubt that the advantage of this method lies in its accessibility, speed, and safety—studies that need more precise and fine sampling might not benefit from drones.Overall, our research demonstrates that drones are an efficient and accurate tool in collecting a wide diversity of insects above the canopies of different habitats. Benefits included rapidly and safely sampling the airspace while drawbacks included battery life limiting the duration of sampling. If this new technique is integrated into the field of entomology, canopy studies can be done much more often, for less money, and more safely than they have been done using other techniques. In 2019, a review of the potential causes of decline of aerial insectivores concluded that insect declines and changes in high quality prey availability could be a large driver of insectivore declines9. However, there is a lack of research detailing insect trends over time. The drone collection method used in this study could provide the missing link between the need for more research of aerial canopy insects and the limitations of the current methodology in entomology. This technique can be used in conjunction with aerial insectivore surveys and diet studies to begin to determine the relationship between declining predators and prey. Future research may also use and add to our guidelines to customize drone and net settings for studies targeting specific insect orders or families. More

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