Climate Change and Parasitism: An Investigation into Parasitic Bees' Climate Responses as Compared to their Hosts
Abstract
✦ Bombus insularis With an increase of research into how climate change has ✦ Sphecodes sp. affected bees, only a fraction of that research has been ✦ Kleptoparasite conducted in relation to bees with parasitic life history strategies. Parasitic bees serve important ecological roles in the ✦ Social Parasite population management of their hosts, which comprise a variety ✦ Climate Change of bee families and groups, while also providing pollination services to a variety of plants. This study analyzes the social ✦ Parasite-Host parasitic bee species Bombus insularis and kleptoparasitic bee Abundance genus Sphecodes as well as their respective hosts near the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory located in Gothic, Colorado over an 11 year and nine year period, respectively, to determine (1) if hosts and their parasites respond similarly to climate change, (2) whether host and parasite abundances are affected by the same environmental cues, and (3) which abiotic environmental factor(s) are driving these variations. To do this we calculated the yearly catch rate of each parasitic bee and their hosts across multiple long term study sites and compared them to snowmelt timing and rainfall utilizing a generalized linear mixed model. We found that Bombus insularis responds to environmental cues in a mismatched manner compared to its hosts while Sphecodes and its hosts respond in a similar way. For all parasites and hosts we found that snowmelt was the only environmental factor driving these variations. These results imply that either climate change is affecting some parasitic bee abundances differently than those of their hosts. Alternatively, the way in which climate change affects some parasitic bee abundances could allow for more parasitism of their host species.
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