Baptiste Martinet

Université Libre de Bruxelles | ULB · Evolutionary Biology and Ecology Unit

Mature spermatozoa are almost completely devoid of cytoplasm; as such it has long been believed that they do not contain ribosomes and are therefore not capable of synthesising proteins. However, since the 1950s, various studies have shown translational activity within spermatozoa, particularly during their in vitro capacitation. But the type of ri...

A problem for understanding bumblebee biogeography is that if bumblebees dispersed from Asia through North America to South America, if they are poor at long-distance dispersal with establishment over sea, and if the land bridge between North and South America was not established until c. 3Ma BP, then there is an apparent conflict with the divergen...

Mature spermatozoa are almost completely devoid of cytoplasm; as such it has long been believed that they do not contain ribosomes and are therefore not capable of synthesising proteins. However, since the 1950s, various studies have shown translational activity within spermatozoa, particularly during their in vitro capacitation. Most of them demon...

HSP70s constitute a family of chaperones, some isoforms of which appear to play a role in sperm function. Notably, global proteomic studies analyzing proteins deregulated in asthenozoospermia, a main cause of male infertility characterized by low sperm motility, showed the dysregulation of some HSP70 isoforms. However, to date, no clear trend has b...

HSP70s constitute a family of chaperones, some isoforms of which appear to play a role in sperm function. Notably, global proteomic studies analysing proteins deregulated in asthenozoospermia, a main cause of male infertility characterized by low sperm motility, showed the deregulation of some HSP70 isoforms. However, to date, no clear trend has be...

Safeguarding crop pollination services requires the identification of the pollinator species involved and the provision of their ecological requirements at multiple spatial scales. However, the potential for agroecological intensification of pollinator-dependent crops by harnessing pollinator diversity is limited by our capacity to characterise the...

Little information is known about the nesting behaviour of arctic and boreal bumblebee species. The arctic is an environment with hard eco-climatic constraints notably for bumblebees. Here, we describe the nest of a common circum boreal species, Bombus lapponicus. A natural nest was discovered from an abandoned rodent nest (Microtus oeconomus) at 5...

Male infertility is a common health problem that can be influenced by a host of lifestyle risk factors such as environment, nutrition, smoking, stress, and endocrine disruptors. These effects have been largely demonstrated on sperm parameters (e.g., motility, numeration, vitality, DNA integrity). In addition, several studies showed the deregulation...

While the Arctic and boreal bumblebee fauna is increasingly studied worldwide, information is missing about the genetic connections between circum-boreal populations of some widespread species, especially those living in remote regions like North-East Siberia and Alaska. Here, we study one of the most common boreal bumblebee species, Bombus (Pyrobo...

Climate change is related to an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme events such as heatwaves. In insect pollinators, heat exposure is associated with direct physiological perturbations and, in several species, could lead to a decrease of fitness related to a decrease in fertility. Here we developed a new experimental protocol in cont...

Bumble bees (Bombus) are a group of eusocial bees with a strongly generalised feeding pattern, collecting pollen from many different botanical families. Though predominantly generalists, some bumble bee species seem to have restricted dietary choices. It is unclear whether restricted diets in bumble bees are inherent or a function of local conditio...

• Against the context of global wildlife declines, targeted mitigation strategies have become critical to preserve what remains of biodiversity. However, the effective development of conservation tools in order to counteract these changes relies on unambiguous taxonomic determination and delineation. • In this study, we focus on an endemic bumblebe...

Single page summary of Vanderplank et al (2021) - contains a QR code for accessing the paper

Current global change substantially threatens pollinators, which directly impacts the pollination services underpinning the stability, structure and functioning of ecosystems. Among these threats, many synergistic drivers such as habitat destruction and fragmentation, increasing use of agrochemicals, decreasing resource diversity as well as climate...

Multisource approaches in taxonomy gather different lines of evidence in order to draw strongly supported taxonomic conclusions and constitute the basis of integrative taxonomy. In the case of overlooked taxa with disjunct distributions for which sampling is more challenging, integrative approaches help to propose stable hypotheses at the species a...

Recent bumble bee declines have made it increasingly important to resolve the status of contentious species for conservation purposes. Some of the taxa found to be threatened are the often rare socially parasitic bumble bees. Among these, the socially parasitic bumble bee, Bombus flavidus Eversmann, has uncertain species status. Although multiple s...

Climate plays a key role in shaping population trends and determining the geographic distribution of species because of their limits in thermal and water tolerance. An evaluation of species tolerance to temperature changes can therefore help predict their potential spatial shifts and population trends triggered by the ongoing global warming. In thi...

1. Climate change is related to an increase in frequency and intensity of extreme events such as heatwaves. It is well established that such events may worsen the current worldwide biodiversity decline. In many organisms, heat stress is associated with direct physiological perturbations and could lead to a decrease of fitness. In contrast to endoth...

Body size is a key parameter of organism fitness. While the impact of climate change on body size has received increasing attention, the long‐term consequences of landscape fragmentation are still poorly known. These two major global threats may potentially induce opposite trends: the decrease of body size in warmer environments (e.g. individuals d...

Wild and managed bees are essential for global food security and the maintenance of biodiversity. At present, the conservation of wild bees is hampered by a huge shortfall in knowledge about the trends and status of individual species mainly due to their large diversity and variation in life histories. In contrast, the managed Western honey bee Api...

Recent improvements in taxonomy considers multiple operational criteria. The integrative taxonomy provides a methodological framework merging these multisource approaches. Bumblebees are considered as a uniform group where their taxonomy remains one of the most difficult. Here, we investigate the taxonomic statuses inside a monophyletic group inclu...

Thermotolerance has often been linked to species distribution for a diverse range of organisms. In the context of climate change, assessing heat resistance ability is useful for understanding potential future range shifts and the physiological response of populations. As bumblebee (Bombus) populations have been declining for several decades with se...

Since the beginning of taxonomy, species have been described based on morphology, but the advent of using semio-chemicals and genetics has led to the discovery of cryptic species (i.e. morphologically similar species). When a new cryptic species is described, earlier type specimens have to be re-evaluated, although this process can be challenging a...

The latest progress of the taxonomy is the use of integrative approach for species delimitation based on a multisource dataset. However, the taxonomic decision that should be made when convergence between the different lines of evidence is not observed remains debated. Here, we investigate the consequences of the application of an "integration by c...

Species can respond differently when facing environmental changes, such as by shifting their geographical ranges or through plastic or adaptive modifications to new environmental conditions. Phenotypic modifications related to environmental factors have been mainly explored along latitudinal gradients, but they are relatively understudied through t...

Pollinators are experiencing declines globally, negatively affecting the reproduction of wild plants and crop production. Well-known drivers of these declines include climatic and nutritional stresses, such as a change of dietary resources due to the degradation of habitat quality. Understanding potential synergies between these two important drive...

Males of many bumblebee species exhibit a conspicuous premating behaviour with two distinct behavioural components: scent marking and patrol flying. The marking pheromone is produced by the cephalic part of the labial gland (CLG). As far as known, the CLG secretion is species-specific and it usually consists of two types of compounds: (i) straight...

While bumblebees have been the focus of much research, the taxonomy of many species groups is still unclear, especially within circum-polar species. Delimiting species based on multisource datasets provides a solution to overcome current systematic issues of closely related populations. Here, we use an integrative taxonomic approach based on novel...

The male cephalic labial gland secretions of bumblebees are known to be species-specific semiochemicals. These secretions that are involved in bumblebee pre-mating recognition provide efficient diagnostic characters for species delimitation. The subgenus Thoracobombus is the largest group of bumblebees and is found in the Palearctic, Nearctic, and...

Bumblebees are experiencing a global decline over the world. Among different factors, climate change has been identified as one of the main driver of pollinators decline. Heat waves are known to disturb the physiology and increase the mortality of insects (due to ontogenic development, water balance changes, fertility and immunity decrease). Previo...

Wild bees play an important role in ecosystems as pollinators of native plants (Tuell et al, 2008). In Lebanon, there are no recent studies on the wild bee fauna to our knowledge. The only published findings are that of Mavromoustakis (1952, 1956) that were regrouped by Grace (2010). The topography of Lebanon with two mountain chains create a range...

Species taxonomy of bumblebees (Bombus Latreille, 1802) is well known to be problematic due to a potentially high intra-specific variability of morphological traits while different species can converge locally to the same color pattern (cryptic species). Assessing species delimitation remains challenging because it requires to arbitrarily select va...

Pollinators are experiencing declines globally. Well-known drivers of such decline include climatic and nutritional stresses. Understanding potential synergies between these two drivers is needed to improve predictive models on future effects of climate change on pollinators. Here bioassays on bumblebee colonies were used to evaluate the interactiv...

Global warming can result in gradual changes with modifications of main climatic parameters (humidity, temperature, etc.) but also in an increase in the frequency of extreme and localized weather events (e.g. heat waves). These heat waves are hyperthermic stress which have been associated with direct physiological perturbations, which are suspected...

Sex-specific chemical secretions have been widely used as diagnostic characters in chemotaxonomy. The taxonomically confused group of bumblebees has reaped the benefit of this approach through the analyses of cephalic labial gland secretions (CLGS). Most of currently available CLGS descriptions concern species from the West-Palearctic region but fe...

Socially parasitic Hymenoptera have evolved morphological, chemical, and behavioral adaptations to overcome the sophisticated recognition and defense systems of their social host to invade host nests and exploit their worker force. In bumblebees, social parasitism appeared in at least three subgenera independently: in the subgenus Psithyrus consist...

Cold-adapted species are expected to reach their largest distribution range during a part of the Ice Ages while the post-glacial warming leads to their range contracting toward high latitude and high altitude areas. This results in extant allopatric distribution of populations and possibly to trait differentiations (selected or not) or even speciat...

Global change is resetting the spatial and ecological equilibrium of complex co-evolutionary relationships between plants and their insect herbivores. We review the mechanisms at play in the responses of plant–insect interactions to global changes, including increased temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentrations, modification of land use and poll...

Global change is resetting the spatial and ecological equilibrium of complex co-evolutionary relationships between plants and their insect herbivores. We review the mechanisms at play in the responses of planteinsect interactions to global changes, including increased temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentrations, modification of land use and poll...

Sex-specific chemical secretions has led to the development of the chemotaxonomy in which such chemical traits are now widely used as diagnostic characters. Most of currently available CLGS descriptions concern species from the West-Palearctic region or few from the New World. Here, CLGS descriptions of East-Palaearctic Thoracobombus reveals some a...

In recent decades, several animal and plant species have been in regression (population size decrease and geographical distribution shrinking). This loss of biodiversity can be due to various factors such as the destruction and fragmentation of habitat, urban development, pesticides or climate change. However, some species benefit from these change...

Wild bees are important pollinators of both domestic and wild plants, and are suffering from a dramatic decline in both diversity and abundance around the World. While much of their decline is likely due to reductions in their habitat caused by human activities, climate warming is likely to pose another challenge to wild bees, especially bees that...

The evolution of signals and reproductive traits involved in the pre-mating recognition has been in focus of abundant research in several model species group such as bumblebees (genus Bombus). However, the most studied bumblebee reproductive trait, the male cephalic labial gland secretions (CLGS), remains unknown among bumblebee species from South...

The recent development of integrative taxonomic approach in bumblebees has led to unexpected merging or splitting of several taxa. Here we investigate the taxonomic statuses of one of the most abundant, widespread, and polytypic Palearctic bumblebee: Bombus pascuorum. The latest review of this species includes 24 subspecies. We use (i) an integrati...

Insect decline results from numerous interacting factors including climate change. One of the major phenomena related to climate change is the increase of the frequency of extreme events such as heat waves. Since heat waves are suspected to dramatically increase insect mortality, there is an urgent need to assess their potential impact. Here, we de...

The current worldwide biodiversity undergoes one of the largest species extinction. Biodiversity decline results from numerous interacting factors, especially climate change. One of the main phenomenons related to climate change is the increase of the frequency of extreme event such as heat waves. Since the heat waves dramatically increase the bee...