Carolina Laura Morales

• PhD (Doctora en Biología)
• Researcher at Centro Científico Tecnológico - Patagonia Norte

Land use change threatens global biodiversity and compromises ecosystem functions, including pollination and food production. Reduced taxonomic α‐diversity is often reported under land use change, yet the impacts could be different at larger spatial scales (i.e., γ‐diversity), either due to reduced β‐diversity amplifying diversity loss or increased...

Land use change threatens global biodiversity and compromises ecosystem functions, including pollination and food production. Reduced taxonomic α-diversity is often reported under land use change, yet the impacts could be different at larger spatial scales (i.e., γ-diversity), either due to reduced β-diversity amplifying diversity loss or increased...

Land use change threatens global biodiversity and compromises ecosystem functions, including pollination and food production. Reduced taxonomic α-diversity is often reported under land use change, yet the impacts could be different at larger spatial scales (i.e., γ-diversity), either due to reduced β-diversity amplifying diversity loss or increased...

La crisis de la biodiversidad es el resultado de diversos agentes causales interrelacionados que socavan, muchas veces de manera irreversible, el mantenimiento de procesos que ocurren a distintos niveles de organización biológica. La complejidad de la crisis se manifiesta en una degradación creciente de los ecosistemas como resultado de la acción h...

This article describes a genome assembly and annotation for Bombus dahlbomii, the giant Patagonian bumble bee. DNA from a single, haploid male collected in Argentina was used for PacBio (HiFi) sequencing and HiC technology was then used to map chromatin contacts. Using Juicer and manual curation, the genome was scaffolded into 18 main pseudomolecul...

Although invasive alien species have long been recognized as a major threat to nature and people, until now there has been no comprehensive global review of the status, trends, drivers, impacts, management and governance challenges of biological invasions. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)...

Over the last quarter century, increasing honey bee colony losses motivated standardized large-scale surveys of managed honey bees (Apis mellifera), particularly in Europe and the United States. Here we present the first large-scale standardized survey of colony losses of managed honey bees and stingless bees across Latin America. Overall, 1736 bee...

The introduction of bees for agricultural production in distinct parts of the world and poor management have led to invasion processes that affect biodiversity, significantly impacting native species. Different Bombus species with invasive potential have been recorded spreading in different regions worldwide, generating ecological and economic loss...

Many of the species used in family farming systems (FFS) in Patagonia belong to the group known as neglected and underutilized species (NUS), which promote biocultural diversity and contribute to food sovereignty. Due to the scarce attention paid to NUS by agronomic sciences, little is known about their biotic pollination, although it is a well-stu...

Pollination services are affected by landscape context, farming management and pollinator community structure, all of which impact flower visitation rates, pollen deposition and final production. We studied these processes in Argentina for highbush blueberry crops, which depend on pollinators to produce marketable yields. We studied how land cover...

Pollination services are affected by landscape context, farming management and pollinator community structure, all of which impact flower visitation rates, pollen deposition and final production. We studied these processes in Argentina for highbush blueberry crops, which depend on pollinators to produce marketable yields. We studied how land cover...

Bombus dahlbomii. We gathered a comprehensive database of occurrence records for B. dahlbomii, B. ruderatus, and B. terrestris from museums and citizen science sources. Multivariate bioclimatic niche analyses and species distribution models were used to determine the extent of climatic niche overlap between invasive and native species and the poten...

Phenological overlap between crop flowering and pollinators is a crucial trait for the pollination of more than 75% of the world's crops. However, crop management rarely considers the seasonal aspect of plant–pollinator mutualism. Here, we investigate the phenological overlap between crops and pollinators and how it affects pollination and fruit pr...

Over the last quarter century, increasing bee colony losses motivated standardized large-scale surveys of managed honey bees ( Apis mellifera ), particularly in Europe and the United States. Here we present the first large-scale standardized survey of colony losses of managed honey bees and stingless bees across Latin America. Overall, 1736 beekeep...

This Chapter provides an analysis and synthesis of how direct and indirect anthropogenic drivers of change in nature, along with natural drivers and biodiversity loss itself, are responsible for the transport, introduction, establishment and spread of invasive alien species. The chapter first outlines the conceptual and analytical framework and app...

La apicultura en la Región Andino-Norpatagónica es una actividad productiva de pequeña escala, con gran potencial de desarrollo. Conocer la distribución espacio-temporal de las especies de plantas melíferas, que aportan a la nutrición de las colmenas de Apis mellifera, es esencial para planificar dicho desarrollo. Asimismo, clasificar las comunidad...

Upon arrival to a new area, alien species have to overcome a series of biotic and abiotic barriers to survive, reproduce, and spread and thus, succeed along the invasion continuum. Failing to understand the role of the different sets of barriers and factors operating across the stages of the invasion continuum limit our ability to predict invasion...

A handful ~206 known bumble bee species ( Bombus ) have been transported worldwide and introduced in non-native regions for crop pollination, leading to long-lasting biological invasions. The introductions and invasions of European B. terrestris and, previously, of B. ruderatus in southernSouth America have been associated with sharp population dec...

The productivity of approximately 75% of crops worldwide depends to some extent on insect pollination. However, while global agriculture is becoming more dependent on pollinators, wild populations of pollinators are declining. For this reason, hives of Apis mellifera (honeybees), the most widely used pollinator, are commonly placed in the fields; i...

Aim Aggregated species occurrence data are increasingly accessible through public databases for the analysis of temporal trends in the geographic distributions of species. However, biases in these data present challenges for statistical inference. We assessed potential biases in data available through GBIF on the occurrences of four flower‐visiting...

Invasive pollinators can disrupt native pollination mutualisms. We investigated the impact of the invasion of the European bumble bee Bombus terrestris in NW Patagonia, Argentina, on the pollination mutualism between the native legume Vicia nigricans and its main pollinator, the native bumble bee B. dahlbomii, and its consequences on plant reproduc...

Modern agriculture is becoming increasingly pollinator-dependent. However, the global stock of domesticated honeybees is growing at a slower rate than its demand, while wild bees are declining worldwide. This uneven scenario of high pollinator demand and low pollinator availability can translate into increasing pollination limitation, reducing the...

Introduction Cold-adapted bumblebees are vulnerable to climate change (CC). South American Bombus dahlbomii, the southernmost bumblebee worldwide, has strongly declined since the 1990s and may be particularly susceptible to current and future CC. Aims/methods We asked (1) whether current CC had a role in the observed decline of this species and (2...

Nectar robbers are common cheaters of plant-pollinator mutualisms by making holes in flower tissues to attain floral rewards often without providing pollination service. Most studies have focused on the consequences of nectar robbing on plant reproduction, whereas the underlying drivers of spatiotemporal variation in nectar robbing have been compar...

Aim: Aggregated species occurrence data are increasingly accessible through public databases for the analysis of temporal trends in species’ distributions. However, biases in these data present challenges for robust statistical inference. We assessed potential biases in data available through GBIF on the occurrences of four flower-visiting taxa: be...

Desde tiempos inmemoriales, el ser humano ha contribuido al movimiento de otros seres vivos entre distintas regiones de la tierra, introduciendo especies en nuevos lugares, donde son consideradas no nativas o exóticas. Este capítulo introduce a las especies de abejas exóticas que han sido introducidas deliberada y accidentalmente a Argentina, Brasi...

Desde tempos imemoriais, os seres humanos têm contribuído para o deslocamento de outros seres vivos entre diferentes regiões da terra, introduzindo espécies em novos lugares, onde são consideradas não nativas ou exóticas. Este capítulo apresenta espécies de abelhas exóticas que foram deliberadamente e acidentalmente introduzidas na Argentina, Brasi...

Desde tiempos inmemoriales, el ser humano ha contribuido al movimiento de otros seres vivos entre distintas regiones de la tierra, introduciendo especies en nuevos lugares, donde son consideradas no nativas o exóticas. Este capítulo introduce a las especies de abejas exóticas que han sido introducidas deliberada y accidentalmente a Argentina, Brasi...

One of the most important challenges facing global agriculture is to ensure an adequate, stable food supply while conserving soil, water and biodiversity. The yield stability of pollinator-dependent crops, such as pear and apple, can be negatively affected by variability of the pollination service, which in turn can reduce mean yield. We explored h...

Recognizing the imperative to evaluate species recovery and conservation impact, in 2012 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) called for development of a “Green List of Species” (now the IUCN Green Status of Species). A draft Green Status framework for assessing species’ progress toward recovery, published in 2018, proposed 2 s...

Ecosystems are interconnected and complex, but conservation has often focused on rehabilitating individual species. A systems-ecology approach aims to support overall ecosystem structure and maintain ecological functions, and may be especially pertinent for mutualistic plant-pollinator communities. This approach focuses on species interactions as t...

Fipronil

Large-scale changes introduced by industrial agriculture can affect other productive activities such as beekeeping, which heavily depends on floral resources and responsible management of agrochemicals. To assess the long-term effect of soybean expansion on honey production in Argentina, we evaluated the relationships between the area cultivated wi...

This book contains 23 chapters divided into seven parts. Part I reviews the key hypotheses in invasion ecology that invoke biotic interactions to explain aspects of plant invasion dynamics; and reviews models, theories and hypotheses on how invasion performance and impact of introduced species in recipient ecosystems can be conjectured according to...

Increasing honey demand and global coverage of pollinator-dependent crops within the context of global pollinator declines have accelerated international trade in managed bees. Bee introductions into agricultural landscapes outside their native ranges have triggered noteworthy invasions, especially of the African honey bee in the Americas and the E...

Agricultural yield is the result of multiple factors and ecological processes (e.g., pollination, fertilization, pest control). Understanding how the different factors interact is fundamental to designing management practices aimed to increase these yields, which are environmental friendly and sustainable over time. In this study, we focus on insec...

The alarming loss of pollinator diversity world‐wide can reduce the productivity of pollinator‐dependent crops, which could have economic impacts. However, it is unclear to what extent the loss of a key native pollinator species affects crop production and farmer's profits. By experimentally manipulating the presence of colonies of a native bumbleb...

This book contains 23 chapters divided into seven parts. Part I reviews the key hypotheses in invasion ecology that invoke biotic interactions to explain aspects of plant invasion dynamics; and reviews models, theories and hypotheses on how invasion performance and impact of introduced species in recipient ecosystems can be conjectured according to...

The global increase in the proportion of land cultivated with pollinator‐dependent crops implies increased reliance on pollination services. Yet agricultural practices themselves can profoundly affect pollinator supply and pollination. Extensive monocultures are associated with a limited pollinator supply and reduced pollination, whereas agricultur...

Latin America is a region with an important and growing apicultural industry and a high diversity of wild bees. Over the last years, the global decline of wild bees and the numerous reports of high colony losses of managed bees have motivated an increase in research on bees in the region. These studies have contributed to improve our understanding...

Pollen limitation can strongly influence reproduction of pollinator-dependent plants. Flower abundance can affect pollination ‘quantity’ and ‘quality’ due to its influence on pollen availability and foraging patterns of pollinators, ultimately impacting on seed production. We complemented individual-based measurements with landscape-level metrics t...

Over the past decade, several countries have carried out monitoring programs of managed honey bee colonies, which suggest beekeeping difficulties, with high colony loss rates all over the world. Although Latin America plays a major role in the global honey supply, information about trends in beekeeping activities and honey bee colony losses are lac...

La introducción en 1996 del paquete tecnológico que incluye soja genéticamente modificada y Glifosato produjo en la Argentina un avance sostenido de la soja sobre otros cultivos. Este proceso favoreció el avance de la frontera agrícola sobre áreas naturales en un 74% y una pérdida de la diversidad de cultivos. En simultáneo se ha observado una dism...

Globally, agriculture increasingly depends on pollinators to produce many seed and fruit crops. However, what constitutes optimal pollination service for pollinator-dependent crops remains unanswered. We developed a simulation model to identify the optimal pollination service that maximizes fruit quality in crops. The model depicts the pollination...

The global trade of species promotes diverse human activities but also facilitates the introduction of potentially invasive species into new environments. As species ignore national boundaries, unilateral national decisions concerning species trade set the stage for transnational species invasion with significant conservation, economic and politica...

Poner en movimiento la voluntad y la solidaridad social El programa de Voluntariado Universitario fue creado en 2005 por la Secretaría de Políticas Universitarias del Ministerio de Educación de la Nación. La propuesta que lo orienta fue pensada como un espacio de prácticas de intervención social realizadas por estudiantes, docentes, investigadores...

Over the past decade, several countries have carried out monitoring of managed honey bee colonies suggesting high losses all over the world. Although Latin America plays a major role in the global honey supply, estimates of honey bee colony losses are lacking. Using the FAO dataset we reveal a worrying situation for apiculture in Latin America, whe...

La biodiversidad está siendo destruida a una tasa alarmante. Una de las principales causas de esta pérdida es el cambio de uso del suelo, que se basa en la agricultura y la ganadería convencionales. Las prácticas de manejo como el monocultivo y el uso intensivo de agroquímicos reducen el número de especies de plantas, aves, insectos y otros grupos...

Conservation biology can profit greatly from incorporating a phylogenetic perspective into analyses of patterns and drivers of species extinction risk. We applied such an approach to analyse patterns of bumblebee (Bombus) decline. We assembled a database representing approximately 43% of the circa 260 globally known species, which included species...

Plant–pollinator interactions and associated pollination services are essential for crop production and the integrity of terrestrial ecosystem services. Introduced pollinators, in particular social bees such as honeybees and bumblebees, have become invaders in many regions of the world, strongly affecting the pollination of native, cultivated, and...

The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...

Figure S1: Database schema. Diversity data in yellow, GIS data in green and Catalogue of Life data in blue. The diversity tables datasource, study, site, measuredtaxon and diversitymeasurement follow the structure described in ‘Methods’ in the main text and in Hudson et al. (2014): a datasource is associated with one or more study records, each of...

The introduction of exotic bees for crop pollination is an increasingly common practice worldwide. While beneficial for crop production, exotic species may become invasive with several deleterious ecological and economic impacts. We studied whether robbing of flower buds by a highly invasive bumble bee (Bombus terrestris) reduces nectar availabilit...

The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...

The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...

Land-use change and intensification threaten bee populations worldwide, imperilling pollination services. Global models are needed to better characterise, project, and mitigate bees' responses to these human impacts. The available data are, however, geographically and taxonomically unrepresentative; most data are from North America and Western Euro...

The invasion success of introduced pollinators and subsequent impact on plant-pollinator interactions is expected to be influenced by functional traits of both, the introduced pollinator and the flowering plants of the recipient communities. Four bumblebee species have been introduced from Europe to Southern Hemisphere land masses for crop pollinat...

p>Land-use change and intensification threaten bee populations worldwide, imperilling pollination services. Global models are needed to better characterise, project, and mitigate bees' responses to these human impacts. The available data are, however, geographically and taxonomically unrepresentative; most data are from North America and Western Eu...

We do not dispute the results of the Report “Climate change impacts on bumblebees converge across continents” (10 July, p. [177][1]), in which J. T. Kerr et al. show that shrinking bumblebee ranges track temperature changes in unexpected and alarming ways at a continental scale, supporting

Understanding the relationships between trait diversity, species diversity and ecosystem functioning is essential for sustainable management. For functions comprising two trophic levels, trait matching between interacting partners should also drive functioning. However, the predictive ability of trait diversity and matching is unclear for most func...

Bombus terrestris Linnaeus is an invasive bumblebee in Argentina. Since its first record in March 2006, B. terrestris has rapidly become the most widespread species in the southern Argentina’s Patagonia. The explosion of B. terrestris populations has been associated with the rapid decline of the unique native species B. dahlbomii, Guérin-Méneville....

Data S1. Data extract.

Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species’ threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeograph...

Visto desde el espacio, el extremo suroeste del continente americano muestra una alargada isla verde: son los bosques y selvas templados australes que se recuestan sobre ambas vertientes de los Andes Patagónicos. Este bioma, único por su historia biogeográfica, biodiversidad e interacciones ecológicas ha capturado la atención desde tiempos de los n...

Production of many flowering crops often benefits from elevated pollinator diversity and abundance. Nevertheless, the opposite relationship may arise if bees impair fruit or seed production and/or quality by damaging flowers during visitation, despite transferring pollen. We assessed pollination and drupelet set (i.e. the number of drupelets per fr...

Invasive, alien plants and pollinators have varying effects on their interaction partners, ranging from highly beneficial to strongly detrimental. To understand these contrasting impacts, we review the benefits and costs associated with plant–pollinator interactions and enquire as to how the presence of abundant invaders affects the benefit–cost ba...

Volcanic eruptions are large-scale natural disturbances, which can negatively affect insect fauna and the ecological interactions in which they are involved. The 2011 eruption of the volcanic complex Puyehue Cordón-Caulle (PCC) produced the deposition of 950 million tons of ash on Argentine Patagonia, creating an ash layer of varying thickness. Alt...

The invasion of natural forest communities by introduced woody species may threat processes that are critical for ecosystem integrity, including plant pollination and reproduction. In particular, invasive conifers (e.g., Pseudotsuga menziesii, Pinus spp.) escaped from forest plantations may impair seed production of anemophilous native conifers by...

Ecología Austral, 24:42-50 (2014)Volcanic eruptions are large-scale natural disturbances, which can negatively affect insect fauna and the ecological interactions in which they are involved. The 2011 eruption of the volcanic complex Puyehue Cordón-Caulle (PCC) produced the deposition of 950 million tons of ash on Argentine Patagonia, creating an as...

The worldwide spread of diseases is considered a major threat to biodiversity and a possible driver of the decline of pollinator populations, particularly when novel species or strains of parasites emerge. Previous studies have suggested that populations of introduced European honeybee (Apis mellifera) and bumblebee species (Bombus terrestris and B...

Despite rising global concerns over the potential impacts of non-native bumble bee (Bombus spp) introductions on native species, large-scale and long-term assessments of the consequences of such introductions are lacking. Bombus ruderatus and Bombus terrestris were sequentially introduced into Chile and later entered Argentina's Patagonian region....

The worldwide trade in bumblebees can lead to the spread of diseases, which in turn has been claimed as a factor in bumblebee decline. Populations of the introduced Bombus terrestris, which invaded NW Patagonia, Argentina, in 2006, harbor the highly pathogenic protozoan Apicystis bombi. We asked whether A. bombi had been co-introduced with B. terre...

Background and Aims Large floral displays have opposing consequences for animal-pollinated angiosperms: they attract more pollinators but also enable elevated among-flower self-pollination (geitonogamy). The presence of sterile flowers as pollinator signals may enhance attraction while allowing displays of fewer open fertile flowers, limiting geito...

Resource preemption by alien organisms can contribute to their invasion success and the demise of functionally equivalent native species, particularly when opportunistic foraging by aliens results in more efficient exploitation. In forests of NW Patagonia, the only native bumble bee and major pollinator, Bombus dahlbomii, declined almost to extinct...

A sizable proportion of agricultural production depends directly or indirectly on animal pollination but estimation of the size of this dependence is missing for most countries, even for some of the most important food producers. Here, we evaluate the current status and temporal trends (1961-2007) in pollinator dependency of Argentinean agriculture...

Anthropogenic habitat disturbance can have profound effects on multiple components of forest biotas including pollinator assemblages. We assessed the effect of small-scale disturbance on local richness, abundance, diversity and evenness of insect pollinator fauna; and how habitat disturbance affected species turnover across the landscape and overal...

Alien plant species can alter pollinator visitation and, in turn, the sexual reproduction of natives. Using a conventional and a phylogenetically controlled meta-analytical approach on a data set of 40 studies, we evaluated the effect of alien neighbour plant species (aliens) on visitation to and reproduction of native co-flowering focal species (f...

We review direct and indirect impacts of invasive alien species (focussing on plants and insects) on native bees worldwide. Although there is a rapidly growing body of research into the effects of invasive alien plants on native plant pollination via disruption of native mutualisms, there has been little research on the impacts of invasive alien pl...

Interspecific pollen transfer (IPT) is one of the mechanisms underlying potential competition among plants for pollinators, and it refers to movement of pollen between different plant species by pollinators that visit their flowers simultaneously. Two components of IPT, related to each other, are distinguished: (a) heterospecific pollen deposition...

Biological invasions might constitute a major threat to mutualisms. Introduced pollinators might competitively displace their native counterparts, which in turn affects the pollination of native plants, if native and alien visitors differ in pollinator effectiveness. Since its invasion in 1994 into south-west Argentina, the introduced European bumb...

Author Summary Plant–animal mutualisms are characterized by weak or asymmetric mutual dependences between interacting species, such that if a plant species depends strongly on an animal species, the animal typically depends weakly on the plant, and vice versa. This limited reciprocal dependency, or “mutualism strength,” might increase species pers...

The Ten Pollination Networks (159 KB XLS)

Matlab Code for Generating Randomized Distributions of Mutualism Strength (2 KB RTF)

Introduction of no native bumblebees (Bombus): causes, ecological consequences and perspectives: The invasion of non native pollinators might have considerable impacts on native pollinators, native and introduced plants. In this article I analyze the causes of introduction of bumblebees (Bombus), the factors favoring the invasion and the distributi...

The invasion of non native pollinators might have considerable impacts on native pollinators, native and introduced plants. In this article I analyze the causes of introduction of bumblebees (Bombus), the factors favoring the invasion and the distribution of introduced species. I also review the studies about their ecological impact, discussing the...