Katja Hogendoorn

University of Adelaide

The life cycle, nesting behaviour and diet breadth of the resin bee Megachile ( Hackeriapis ) tosticauda (Cockerell) are described for the first time. Microscopic imaging of the larval provisions and pollen from the scopa showed that Megachile tosticauda from Adelaide, South Australia, is narrowly oligolectic and specialised on Eucalyptus pollen. P...

With large wildfires becoming more frequent1,2, we must rapidly learn how megafires impact biodiversity to prioritize mitigation and improve policy. A key challenge is to discover how interactions among fire-regime components, drought and land tenure shape wildfire impacts. The globally unprecedented3,4 2019–2020 Australian megafires burnt more tha...

Research on insect-microbe relationships is booming, with DNA sequencing being the most commonly used method to describe insect microbiota. However, sequencing is vulnerable to contamination, especially when the sample has low microbial biomass. Such low-biomass samples are common across insect taxa, developmental stages, and tissue types. Identify...

Habitat loss is causing declines in native bees and reducing pollination services. Revegetation can be used to reverse these declines, and this restoration technique attracts growing efforts and resources. However, how the quality of revegetation affects native bee abundance, diversity and their pollination services is not well understood, and this...

The breakdown of plant material fuels soil functioning and biodiversity. Currently, process understanding of global decomposition patterns and the drivers of such patterns are hampered by the lack of coherent large‐scale datasets. We buried 36,000 individual litterbags (tea bags) worldwide and found an overall negative correlation between initial m...

Maintenance of a diverse pollinator community helps ensure resilience in pollination services. Fragments of woody and grassy vegetation in the vicinity of croplands have been shown to encourage the presence of crop‐pollinating bees. However, to date, little attention has been given to the management practices that may enhance the presence of bees i...

Efforts to explore optimal molecular methods for identifying plant mixtures, particularly pollen, are increasing. Pollen identification (ID) and quantification is important in many fields, including pollination ecology and agricultural sciences, but quantifying mixture proportions remains challenging. Traditional pollen ID using microscopy is time-...

Studying rapid biological changes accompanying the introduction of alien organisms into native ecosystems can provide insights into fundamental ecological and evolutionary theory. While powerful, this quasi-experimental approach is difficult to implement because the timing of invasions and their consequences are hard to predict, meaning that baseli...

The majority of the human population now lives in urban environments and that proportion is forecast to increase dramatically by 2050. As urbanization increases, the urban environment will increasingly play a role in biodiversity conservation. Floral visitors, often erroneously referred to as pollinators, are integral to the maintenance of ecosyste...

Australia has an abundance of feral honey bee colonies. Understanding their densities is important to assess their current economic and ecological impact and the need for mitigation should the mite Varroa destructor become established. Inferring colony density based on the genotypes of honey bee drones (males) caught in a Williams trap has been ide...

Australian Native Bee Association

Worldwide, the use of managed bees for crop pollination and honey production has increased dramatically. Concerns about the pressures of these increases on native ecosystems has resulted in a recent expansion in the literature on this subject. To collate and update current knowledge, we performed a systematic review of the literature on the effects...

Interactions between biocontrol agents of crop pests can lead to neutral, detrimental, or improved outcomes for pest control. We investigated the existence and the nature of the additive interactions between a parasitoid, Diadegma semiclausum (Hellén) (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae), and two hemipteran predators, Oechalia schellenbergii Guérin‐Ménevil...

The conversion of natural vegetation to agriculture is a leading cause of biodiversity decline globally, and can impact negatively on ecosystem services such as pollination. Global meta-analyses find that crop visitation by wild pollinators increases with the amount of natural or semi-natural vegetation in the surrounding landscape. However, these...

The correspondent and first author, Abraao Almeida Santos, would like to remove ‘Coordination for theImprovement of Higher Education Personnel [grant number 88881.189618/2018-01]’ from the research funding and acknowledgement sections in the above-mentioned paper. The study was conducted with funding provided to the first author by the agency ‘Co...

In the paper by Santos et al. (2019), the correspondent and first author, Abraão Almeida Santos, would like to remove ‘Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—Brasil (CAPES)—Financial Code nº 001’ and ‘CAPES-PDSE nº 47/2017 (Grant number 88881.189618/2018-01)’ from the research funding and acknowledgements sections in the above...

Five new species of bees are described from the Quinkan region of Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia: Austrothurgus nanus sp. nov. (Megachilidae), Nomia (Paulynomia) eburata sp. nov. (Halictidae), Leioproctus (Protomorpha) quinkanensis sp. nov., Chrysocolletes loripes sp. nov., Chrysocolletes aureus sp. nov. (Colletidae). A sixth species, C...

The 2019–2020 Australian Black Summer wildfires demonstrated that single events can have widespread and catastrophic impacts on biodiversity, causing a sudden and marked reduction in population size for many species. In such circumstances, there is a need for conservation managers to respond rapidly to implement priority remedial management actions...

Protective covers (i.e., glasshouses, netting enclosures, and polytunnels) are increasingly used in crop production to enhance crop quality, yield, and production efficiency. However, many protected crops require insect polli-nators to achieve optimal pollination and there is no consensus about how best to manage pollinators and crop pollination in...

The genus Leptospermum (Myrtaceae) is widespread in Australia and contains several species that are of increasing interest to produce bioactive honey. Here, we used the Maxent algorithm to investigate bioclimatic, climatic, and soil variables as predictors for potential distributions of seven Leptospermum species that have been identified as useful...

Losses of honey bees have been repeatedly reported from many places worldwide. The widespread use of synthetic pesticides have led to concerns regarding their environmental fate and their effects on pollinators. While the impact of insecticides on bees has received substantial attention, relatively little is known about the consequences of the use...

Pollinators are globally recognized for their role in ecosystem function and reports of pollinator declines are a source of public and academic concern. However, pollinator decline is often erroneously interpreted as if crop pollination services are under threat, which can lead to misguided efforts to protect introduced and/or widespread crop polli...

False accusations and misinterpretations of the literature by Saunders et al. (2021) are a disservice to rigorous scientific discourse. Finally, we are disappointed that Saunders et al (2021) read our paper as an attack on their work, rather than as an effort to improve the science around bee surveys in Australia

There is an increased interest in conducting studies on pollinators – especially wild bees – in Australia, as well as abroad. We welcome this increased research attention, however we are concerned by poor methods in the sampling techniques used, and the poor taxonomic treatment of specimens. We explicitly highlight these two issues, discuss the imp...

Biological sources of carbon sequestration such as revegetation have been highlighted as important avenues to combat climate change and meet global targets by the global community including the Paris Climate Agreement. However, current and projected carbon prices present a considerable barrier to broad‐scale adoption of tree planting as a key mitig...

Native bee research suffers from poor methods in the sampling techniques used, and the poor taxonomic treatment of specimens. The issues associated with poor sampling methods and taxonomic resolution are problems facing biodiversity and ecological research as a whole, but are particularly prevalent with native bee research. We explicitly highlight...

The green carpenter bee, Xylocopa aerata (Smith, 1851), has undergone a severe reduction in its distribution over the previous century, in part because of habitat loss and fragmentation and its dependency on old‐growth heathland habitats. In 2007, the last remaining South Australian population, on Kangaroo Island, was negatively affected by a short...

The collection of fungal spores by honey bees, Apis mellifera, can be classified as active or passive, the latter when spores are associated with pollen, nectar or honey dew. While low quality and shortage of pollen have been raised as hypotheses for fungal spore collection, the nutritional value of fungal spores for honey bees is poorly understood...

Honey bees, Apis mellifera, actively collect a range of materials including pollen and fungal spores. However, the interaction between honey bees and fungal spores is largely unexplored. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the corbicular contents of workers foraging on zucchini leaves severely affected by powdery mildew. The dimensions (length an...

For molecular insect identification, amplicon sequencing methods are recommended because they offer a cost effective approach for targeting small sets of informative genes from multiple samples. In this context, high-throughput multilocus amplicon sequencing has been achieved using the MiSeq Illumina sequencing platform. However, this approach gene...

The species in the subgenus Amegilla (Asaropoda) are revised. Species delineation was decided based on diagnostic morphological characters as well as an incomplete phylogeny based on mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase 1 sequence data. Strong support was obtained for separating the Australian species of Amegilla into the three subgenera previously pro...

Due to local extinction, the endangered green carpenter bee (Xylocopa aerata) has a disjunct distribution in the southeast of Australia. The species relies on dead softwood from a small selection of plant species for making its nests. Habitat fragmentation, combined with deleterious fire events, is thought to have negatively impacted on nesting sub...

Honey bees, Apis mellifera, have been implicated as vectors of plant pathogens. However, the survival of spores of plant pathogenic fungi through the digestive tract of workers has not been investigated. As workers defecate outside the hive, transport of hives could give rise to biosecurity concerns if fungal spores remain viable following passage...

The butterfly Ascia monuste L. (Lepidoptera: Pieridae) is a specialist pest of brassica crops in neotropical regions where it significantly impacts crop production. Understanding the actual and potential distribution of the pest and its hosts in current and future climates may help government agencies to mitigate and manage potential incursions. He...

Twenty six new species of Australian Leioproctus (subgenusColletellus) (Hymenoptera, Colletidae) are described: aberrans Leijs, sp. n. , alatus Leijs, sp. n. , albipilosus Leijs, sp. n. , albiscopis Leijs, sp. n. , aliceafontanus Leijs, sp. n. , altispinosus Leijs, sp. n. , aratus Leijs, sp. n. , auricorneus Leijs, sp. n. , bidentatus Leijs, sp. n....

Unmanaged, or feral, honey bees can be abundant in Australian agricultural landscapes and provide substantial, but unquantified, crop pollination services. This makes these production systems vulnerable to ecological disturbances. Quantifying the densities of feral honey bees is key to determining the reliance of free pollination services and syste...

BACKGROUND Eretmocerus warrae (Hymenoptera: Aphelinidae) is a parasitoid of the glasshouse whitefly, Trialeurodes vaporariorum (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae). Here, we compare its potential as a biological control agent at high temperatures to that of Encarsia formosa (Hymenoptera: Aphelinidae), a wasp which is widely sold for control of T. vaporariorum....

Despite progress in recent decades, the conservation management of insects and allied invertebrates in Australia is challenging and remains a formidable task against a background of poor taxonomic and biological knowledge, limited resources (funds and scientific expertise) and a relatively low level of community engagement, education and awareness....

Despite progress in recent decades, the conservation management of insects and allied invertebrates in Australia is challenging and remains a formidable task against a background of poor taxonomic and biological knowledge, limited resources (funds and scientific expertise) and a relatively low level of community engagement, education and awareness....

Bee pollination is critical for improving productivity of one third of all plants or plant products consumed by humans. The health of honey bees is in decline in many countries worldwide, and RNA viruses together with other biological, environmental and anthropogenic factors have been identified as the main causes. The rapid genetic variation of vi...

A number of bee RNA viruses, including Deformed wing virus (DWV), are so far unreported from Australia. These viruses can be introduced together with imported live honey bees (Apis mellifera) and their products, with other bee species, and bee parasites. Given that bee viruses have a profound impact on bee health, it is surprising that since the in...

The Australian bees in the subgenera Notomegilla and Zonamegilla of the genus Amegilla are revised. Commonly in Australia the species in these subgenera are called blue-banded bees, although not all species have blue bands. A phylogeny based on mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase 1 sequence data was used to delineate the species and a set of morpholog...

Examined specimens

Phylogenetic trees and table of DNA voucher numbers, including Genbank accession numbers

Worldwide, the loss of foraging opportunities due to agriculture and urban development is among the most important threats to native bees. In the face of a changing habitat, some species are able to diversify their pollen ‘portfolio’ (generalists) while others cannot (specialists). Specialists are more prone to extinction than generalists as the la...

Goniocolletes comatus Maynard, 2013 is redescribed. G.wanni sp. n. and the male of Trichocolletes luteorufus Batley & Houston, 2012 are described.