Nicolas J Vereecken

Nicolas J Vereecken
Université Libre de Bruxelles | ULB · Brussels Bioengineering School

PhD in Biological Sciences

About

337
Publications
122,098
Reads
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3,482
Citations
Introduction
My current research focuses on the evolutionary ecology and conservation of bee-flower interactions, as well as on agroecosystem biodiversity, agroecological innovations, and urban ecology. I am involved in assessments of the drivers of diversity change in wild bee communities with regional/national/international projects in Europe, in the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. I am teaching agroecology to undergraduate students in agricultural, biological and social sciences.
Additional affiliations
August 2024 - present
Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute
Position
  • Researcher
Description
  • Resident researcher (C Permit holder) at TAWIRI based in the Entomology Lab run by M. Alain Pauly
September 2023 - present
UniLaSalle
Position
  • Invited Professor
Description
  • Invited Professor UniLaSalle in Rouen (France) hosted by Marie-Asma Ben Othmen. I co-teach a one-week module on Urban Agroecology with my colleague Prof. Monika Egerer (University of Munich, Germany) every year.
October 2013 - September 2016
Université Libre de Bruxelles
Position
  • Professor (Assistant)
Description
  • https://www.agroecologie-ulb.net/prof-nicolas-j-vereecken
Education
September 1999 - September 2004
University of Liège (Gembloux Agro Bio Tech)
Field of study
  • Agricultural Sciences - Crop Protection

Publications

Publications (337)
Article
Bumblebees are an essential component of our agroecosystems, and their decline represents a major threat for the sexual reproduction — and hence survival — of wild flowers and several important pollinator-dependent crops alike. The EU bumblebee fauna encompasses many highly imperiled species characterized by a relatively narrow range size and often...
Article
Full-text available
Although bee-plant associations are generally maintained through speciation processes, host shifts have occurred during evolution. Understanding shifts between both phylogenetically and morphologically unrelated plants (i.e., host-saltation) is especially important since they could have been key processes in the origin and radiation of bees. Probab...
Article
Full-text available
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...
Article
Full-text available
Recent studies have reported on dramatic cases of aerial insect population declines by focusing on the measure of the total biomass of caught insects. However, there is currently no consensus about how biomass patterns among sites and habitats might consistently capture the subtleties of changes in aerial insect community structure. Here, we invest...
Preprint
Stingless bee honey (SBH) is a prime natural product consumed and used for diverse medicinal and traditional purposes by local communities across the (sub-)tropics. The drivers of its compositional variation within and among species remain poorly understood, although this could inform broader and less explored eco-evolutionary theories. In this stu...
Article
Full-text available
A wide network of para-taxonomists and citizen science initiatives in Belgium has allowed to intensify contemporary targeted field surveys focusing on elusive/rarer species and their (threatened) habitats, but also on a more widespread monitoring of common species. This has resulted in 24 wild bee species recorded for the first time in Belgium, the...
Article
Full-text available
Studies have found that biotic information can play an important role in shaping the distribution of species even at large scales. However, results from species distribution models are not always consistent among studies and the underlying factors that influence the importance of biotic information to distribution models, are unclear. We studied wi...
Article
Full-text available
The discourse around the complexity and memorability of scientific names versus the simplicity and accessibility of vernacular names is a long- standing one, frequently raised by naturalists, science communicators,and conservationists. Some of these professionals have advocated for the adoption of an alternative, unregulated naming system that heav...
Article
This research evaluates the impact of agricultural intensification on the recruitment, of managed vs. wild pollinators in NE Bulgaria. We investigated the spectrum and activity of pollinators in lavender monocrop fields versus those in an ornamental lavender plantation. The pollinator visitation activity in the agrarian study sites was several time...
Poster
Full-text available
Introducing www.beefall.org an online tool to help in "Understanding and addressing shortfalls in European wild bee data". Our understanding of bee diversity and ecology is hindered by data deficits and knowledge gaps. BeeFall uses a digital collection of ecological data on European wild bees to map important gaps in our knowledge. This includes wh...
Article
Full-text available
Stingless bees are important pollinators and producers of honey used in folk medicine. We investigate the nectar sources for two Afrotropical stingless bee species, Hypotrigona araujoi and Meliponula ferruginea. Pollen was extracted and processed using next-generation sequencing (NGS) methods, DNA metabarcoding. Results show that stingless bees vis...
Article
Full-text available
Understanding and reversing biodiversity decline in the Anthropocene requires robust data on species taxonomic identity, distribution, ecology, and population trends. Data deficits hinder biodiversity assessments and conservation , and despite major advances over the past few decades, our understanding of bee diversity, decline and distribution in...
Article
Full-text available
Background Islands are known to host unique flowering plant assemblages visited by insular insects, including by social bees, a phenomenon thought to potentially impact the honey composition and associated medicinal applications. In this study, we characterized several physical–chemical parameters of honey produced by the stingless bee Meliponula (...
Article
Natural history collections are a cornerstone of entomology, and the conservation of specimens is the essential prerequisite for the development of research into systematics, biogeography, ecology, evolution and other disciplines. Yet, specimens collected during decades of entomological research conducted in less developed countries across Sub-Saha...
Article
Full-text available
Research on stingless bee products has increased in recent years, and of particular interest is propolis because of its biological activities such as antioxidant and antimicrobial. However, there is paucity of information regarding intra-hive variations in the biochemical composition and biofunctional properties of this propolis. In this study, we...
Article
Full-text available
Recent field surveys in the eastern Canary Islands (Spain), followed by contributions of new occurrence records through the citizen science platform iNaturalist.com and the social media photo repository Flickr.com have revealed the presence of an overlooked small carder bee species (genus Pseudoanthidium Friese (Megachilidae: Anthidiini)) on the is...
Article
Introducing any species in a large number into an ecosystem is never a zero-sum game. In this paper, we assessed what are the main advances on the known impacts of Massively Introduced Managed Species (MIMS) on plant–pollinator communities and networks. We first focused on the raising body of literature studying the effects of the introduction of h...
Article
Full-text available
We characterized the microbial communities of the crop, midgut, hindgut, and ovaries of the wild solitary bees Andrena vaga, Anthophora plumipes, Colletes cunicularius, and Osmia cornuta through 16S rRNA gene and ITS2 amplicon sequencing and a large-scale isolation campaign. The bacterial communities of these bees were dominated by endosymbionts of...
Article
Full-text available
Background Stingless bee honey (SBH) is a natural remedy and therapeutic agent traditionally used by local com- munities across the (sub-)tropics. Forest SBH represents a prime non-timber forest product (NTFP) with a potential to revitalize indigenous foodways and to generate income in rural areas, yet it is also used in a variety of non- food cont...
Article
Visitation by wild bee species alongside managed pollinators is necessary to ensure consistent yields and fruit quality in apple fields. Wild bee species are vulnerable to several environmental changes. Climate change is expected to lead to broad-scale changes to wild bee distributions that will impact the service they provide as crop pollinators....
Article
Full-text available
Pollinators play a crucial role in ecosystems globally, ensuring the seed production of most flowering plants. They are threatened by global changes and knowledge of their distribution at the national and continental levels is needed to implement efficient conservation actions, but this knowledge is still fragmented and/or difficult to access. As a...
Article
Full-text available
Body size is a trait that can affect plant–pollinator interaction efficiency and plant reproductive success. We explored the impact of intraspecific size shifts on the interactions between pollinators and flowering plants under controlled conditions. We considered two development conditions leading to the production of large and small individual fl...
Article
Full-text available
The challenges of bee research in Asia are unique and severe, reflecting different cultures, landscapes, and faunas. Strategies and frameworks developed in North America or Europe may not prove applicable. Virtually none of these species have been assessed by the IUCN and there is a paucity of public data on even the basics of bee distribution. If...
Article
Full-text available
Flower-visiting insects are essential in maintaining a healthy and productive agricultural landscape through ecosystem services such as pollination. Fruits are important sources of vitamins and micronutrients, and several fruit crops depend on animal pollination, which enhances their nutritional content. Besides honey bees, apple orchards can susta...
Article
An essential prerequisite to safeguard pollinator species is characterisation of the multifaceted diversity of crop pollinators and identification of the drivers of pollinator community changes across biogeographical gradients. The extent to which intensive agriculture is associated with the homogenisation of biological communities at large spatial...
Article
Full-text available
Chile's isolation and varied climates have driven the evolution of a unique biodiversity with a high degree of endemism. As a result, Chile encompasses diverse environments, including the Mediterranean-type ecosystem, a global biodiversity hotspot. These environments are currently threatened by anthropogenic land use change impacting the integrity...
Article
The foraging activities of pollinators depend on a variety of factors, such as the availability of pollen and nectar resources or the seasonality. We performed measurements on the activity patterns of Apis mellifera adansonii Latreille by focusing on different factors: (i) we counted the number of bees entering the hives during 10 min per hour star...
Article
Full-text available
We provide a culturomics analysis of the cultivable bacterial communities of the crop, midgut and hindgut compartments, as well as the ovaries, of the invasive insect Vespa velutina, along with a cultivation-independent analysis of samples of the same nest through 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. The Vespa velutina bacterial symbiont community was dom...
Article
Full-text available
The present study aimed to characterise the bacterial, fungal and parasite gut community of the invasive bee Megachile sculpturalis sampled from native (Japan) and invaded (USA and France) regions via 16S rRNA and ITS2 amplicon sequencing and PCR detection of bee microparasites. The bacterial and fungal gut microbiota communities in bees from invad...
Article
Full-text available
Background To understand mechanisms of adaptation and plasticity of pollinators and other insects a better understanding of diversity and function of their key symbionts is required. Commensalibacter is a genus of acetic acid bacterial symbionts in the gut of honey bees and other insect species, yet little information is available on the diversity...
Preprint
Full-text available
Stingless bee honey is a natural remedy and therapeutic agent traditionally used by indigenous communities across the (sub-)Tropics. Despite the potential of forest honey, a prime non-timber forest product (NTFP), to revitalize indigenous foodways and to generate income in rural areas, reports on Traditional Ecological Knowledge involving stingless...
Article
Full-text available
Aim: Wild bees still face striking shortfalls in knowledge of biodiversity in key regions of the world. This includes Europe, where despite a long tradition of data gathering, the continental scale distribution patterns of wild bees have not been systematically analysed to date. This study aims to characterise large-scale biodiversity patterns to:...
Article
Stingless bees are important pollinators of wild and cultivated plants, and they produce medicinal honey. However, their taxonomy and systematics are still debated and would benefit a continent-wide revision. Here, we explore the potential of wing shape in delineation and classification of Afrotropical Meliponini using geometric morphometrics. We s...
Chapter
Résumé La réussite des trois luttes en matière de protection de l’environnement, menées depuis la révolution burkinabè, ne deviendront un succès que si la conservation de la nature est associée à l’exploitation durable des ressources naturelles. La méliponiculture est considérée comme un secteur d’activités qui pourrait allier conservation de la na...
Preprint
Full-text available
Natural history collections (NHCs) are a cornerstone of entomology, and the conservation of specimens is the essential prerequisite for the development of research into systematics, biogeography, ecology, evolution and other disciplines. Yet, specimens collected during decades of entomological research conducted in less developed countries across S...
Technical Report
Full-text available
Quand on parle d’abeilles, tout le monde pense évidemment à l’abeille mellifère européenne (Apis mellifera), mais saviez-vous qu’il existe près de 400 espèces d’abeilles sauvages en Belgique, et que plus de la moitié d’entre elles peuvent être trouvées dans la Région de Bruxelles-Capitale (RBC) ? Des gros bourdons aux minuscules abeilles solitaires...
Preprint
Classical Species Distribution Models are primarily based on climate, land use and other abiotic variables. Despite recent studies showing that biotic information can play an important role in shaping the distribution of species even at large scales, results are not always consistent among studies and the underlying factors that influence the impor...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Anthropogenic drivers of bumblebee population decline are well-established, particularly in Europe and North America. Agriculturalizsation is associated with a loss of nesting sites, habitat fragmentation, agrochemical toxicity and nutritional stress; climate change is affecting population distribution, phenology, and voltinism, among other traits....
Article
Full-text available
Honey collection evolved from simple honey hunting to the parallel and independent domestication of different species of bees in various parts of the world. In this study, we investigate the extent to which the composition of Apis and stingless bee honeys has been a driver in the selection of different bee species for domestication in Mesoamerica (...
Article
Full-text available
Human-induced environmental impacts on wildlife are widespread, causing major biodiversity losses. One major threat is agricultural intensification, typically characterised by large areas of monoculture, mechanical tillage, and the use of agrochemicals. Intensification leads to the fragmentation and loss of natural habitats, native vegetation, and...
Poster
Full-text available
Using RADSeq approaches, we uncovered potential loci associated with 5 environmental variables (land cover and climate) in two European bumblebee species (Bombus pascuorum and B. lapidarius).
Preprint
Full-text available
Chile’s isolation and varied climates have driven the evolution of a unique biodiversity with a high degree of endemism. The Mediterranean-type biome of Central Chile is one of 35 global biodiversity hotspots and has been highlighted as one of Chile’s most endangered areas. It is threatened by anthropogenic land use change impacting the integrity o...
Article
During the main COVID-19 global pandemic lockdown period of 2020 an impromptu set of pollination ecologists came together via social media and personal contacts to carry out standardised surveys of the flower visits and plants in gardens. The surveys involved 67 rural, suburban and urban gardens, of various sizes, ranging from 61.18° North in Norwa...
Preprint
Full-text available
Honey collection evolved from sheer honey hunting to the parallel and independent domestication of different species of bees in various parts of the world. In this study, we investigate the extent to which the compositional convergence in Apis and stingless bee honeys has driven independently the domestication of different bee species in Mesoameric...
Article
Full-text available
Apples are one of the most important global crops that relies heavily on insect pollination, which has been shown to increase apple production and value. However, recent reports indicate that apple production has been declining in certain regions, including in Bhutan. One of the potential causes of declining production are pollination deficits driv...
Article
Full-text available
Climate, landscape composition, management practice, and wild bee pollination are all variables thought to play significant roles in commercial apple production. However, how these variables affect production efficiency under field-realistic conditions has not been investigated at large geographical scales. We combined intensive standardized field...
Article
Full-text available
Snodgrassella is a genus of Betaproteobacteria that lives in the gut of honeybees (Apis spp.) and bumblebees (Bombus spp). It is part of a conserved microbiome that is composed of a few core phylotypes and is essential for bee health and metabolism. Phylogenomic analyses using whole-genome sequences of 75 Snodgrassella strains from 4 species of hon...
Preprint
Commercial apple production relies on managed honey bees for pollination, and on intensive management for pest control. Previous studies revealed the detrimental effects of these factors on wild bee diversity in agroecosystems, and the pollination services they provide. However, the extent to which honey bee dominance and management interact under...
Article
Full-text available
Complex biotic networks of invaders and their new environments pose immense challenges for researchers aiming to predict current and future occupancy of introduced species. This might be especially true for invasive bees, as they enter novel trophic interactions. Little attention has been paid to solitary, invasive wild bees, despite their increasi...
Article
Full-text available
Seventy five percent of the world's food crops benefit from insect pollination. Hence, there has been increased interest in how global change drivers impact this critical ecosystem service. Because standardized data on crop pollination are rarely available, we are limited in our capacity to understand the variation in pollination benefits to crop y...
Article
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...
Article
Commercial apple production relies on managed honey bees (Apis mellifera) for pollination, and on intensive management for pest control. Previous studies have highlighted the potentially detrimental effects of intensive crop management on wild bee diversity in agroecosystems, potentially jeopardizing the pollination services they provide. However,...
Preprint
Snodgrassella is a Betaproteobacteria genus found in the gut of honeybees ( Apis spp.) and bumblebees ( Bombus spp). It is part of a conserved microbiome that is composed of few core phylotypes and is essential for bee health and metabolism. Phylogenomic analyses using whole genome sequences of 75 Snodgrassella strains from 4 species of honey bees...
Article
Beekeeping is an age-old practice in Burkina Faso in general and in the villages along the PONASI corridor n°1 in particular. The objective of this study was to characterize beekeeping practices. It was carried out using ethno-beekeeping survey forms. 37 beekeepers from the six villages bordering corridor 1 were interviewed. The beekeepers were mai...
Data
A plain langauge 2 page overview of the paper "Opportunities to reduce pollination deficits and address production shortfalls in an important insect-pollinated crop" designed for non-acedemic audiences (or very busy acedemics). Please feel free to pass this along.
Article
Full-text available
Pollinators face multiple pressures and there is evidence of populations in decline. As demand for insect‐pollinated crops increases, crop production is threatened by shortfalls in pollination services. Understanding the extent of current yield deficits due to pollination and identifying opportunities to protect or improve crop yield and quality th...
Article
The role of plant–pollinator interactions in the rapid radiation of the angiosperms have long fascinated evolutionary biologists. Studies have brought evidence for pollinator-driven diversification of various plant lineages, particularly plants with specialized flowers and concealed rewards. By contrast, little is known about how this crucial inter...
Article
Full-text available
The role of plant–pollinator interactions in the rapid radiation of the angiosperms have long fascinated evolutionary biologists. Studies have brought evidence for pollinator-driven diversification of various plant lineages, particularly plants with specialized flowers and concealed rewards. By contrast, little is known about how this crucial inter...
Article
The importance of wild bees for crop pollination is well established, but less is known about which species contribute to service delivery to inform agricultural management, monitoring and conservation. Using sites in Great Britain as a case study, we use a novel qualitative approach combining ecological information and field survey data to establi...
Article
Full-text available
We investigated the effect of bee species identity and harvesting methods on the chemical composition and antiradical activity of 53 honey samples, produced by six stingless bee species in western Kenya (Kakamega forest). Our results illustrated that none of the assayed parameters significantly varied between the honey samples harvested by “punchin...
Article
Full-text available
• Urbanisation is often put forward as an important driver of biodiversity loss, including for pollinators such as wild bees. However, recent evidence shows that the mosaics of urban green spaces, and in particular certain categories of informal urban green spaces (IGS), can play an important role to help native wild bees thrive in cities. • Here,...
Article
Full-text available
Industrial agriculture (IA) has been recognized among the main drivers of biodiversity loss, climate change, and native pollinator decline. Here we summarize the known negative effects of IA on pollinator biodiversity and illustrate these problems by considering the case of Chile, a “world biodiversity hotspot” (WBH) where food exports account for...
Article
Bumblebees are ubiquitous, cold-adapted eusocial bees found worldwide from subarctic to tropical regions of the world. They are key pollinators in most temperate and boreal ecosystems, and both wild and managed populations are significant contributors to agricultural pollination services. Despite their broad ecological niche at the genus level, bum...
Data
A two page summary of the paper - this is designed for a non-acedemic audience. Pleasse feel free to disseminate. There is a QR Code for the paper itself included.