Papers by Ruby E Stephens
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Biology letters, Jun 1, 2024
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bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Feb 5, 2024
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bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), Oct 12, 2021
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Biological Journal of The Linnean Society, Feb 14, 2017
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Molecular Ecology, Apr 1, 2019
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Scientific Reports, Nov 7, 2016
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New Phytologist, Jun 5, 2023
Summary Most contemporary angiosperms (flowering plants) are insect pollinated, but pollination b... more Summary Most contemporary angiosperms (flowering plants) are insect pollinated, but pollination by wind, water or vertebrates occurs in many lineages. Though evidence suggests insect pollination may be ancestral in angiosperms, this is yet to be assessed across the full phylogeny. Here, we reconstruct the ancestral pollination mode of angiosperms and quantify the timing and environmental associations of pollination shifts. We use a robust, dated phylogeny and species‐level sampling across all angiosperm families to model the evolution of pollination modes. Data on the pollination system or syndrome of 1160 species were collated from the primary literature. Angiosperms were ancestrally insect pollinated, and insects have pollinated angiosperms for c. 86% of angiosperm evolutionary history. Wind pollination evolved at least 42 times, with few reversals to animal pollination. Transitions between insect and vertebrate pollination were more frequent: vertebrate pollination evolved at least 39 times from an insect‐pollinated ancestor with at least 26 reversals. The probability of wind pollination increases with habitat openness (measured by Leaf Area Index) and distance from the equator. Our reconstruction gives a clear overview of pollination macroevolution across angiosperms, highlighting the long history of interactions between insect pollinators and angiosperms still vital to biodiversity today.
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Insectes Sociaux, Jul 9, 2021
Many animals deposit odours in their environment, either intentionally or unintentionally, that r... more Many animals deposit odours in their environment, either intentionally or unintentionally, that remain at a site after the animal itself has left. These odours may be exploited by other species as social information, and thus have a significant role in structuring species interactions, even where the species involved rarely interact directly. Here we show that three species of Australian social stingless bees (Meliponini) not only detect the odours left behind by conspecifics, but also those of an abundant introduced competitor, the honey bee Apis mellifera (Apini). Foraging bees deposit pheromones that assist nestmates in locating profitable food sources (signals) and/or involuntary olfactory “footprints” (cues), both of which are vulnerable to exploitation by the foragers of other colonies. Using choice trials, we find that foragers of Tetragonula carbonaria, Tetragonula clypearis and Austroplebeia australis were more attracted to feeders recently used by, and thus carrying the odours of, their own species (both nestmates and non-nestmates) or honey bees, than to clean unused feeders. Australia’s stingless bees may learn to associate honey bee odours with food and exploit this to their advantage, or they may mistake honey bee odours for some other attractant and be misdirected. Our results suggest that introduced social insects could have a previously overlooked impact on resident communities, by modifying the olfactory landscape of shared resources in ways that alter native species’ foraging behaviour.
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New Phytologist
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SummaryPollination is a fundamental process driving the speciation of angiosperms (flowering plan... more SummaryPollination is a fundamental process driving the speciation of angiosperms (flowering plants). Most contemporary angiosperms are insect pollinated, but abiotic pollination by wind or water and vertebrate pollination by birds or mammals occurs in many lineages. We model the evolution of pollination across angiosperms and quantify the timing and environmental associations of pollination shifts.We use a robust dated phylogeny and trait-independent species-level sampling across all families of angiosperms to model the evolution of pollination modes. Data on the pollination system or syndrome of 1160 species were collated from primary literature.Angiosperms were ancestrally insect pollinated, and insects have pollinated angiosperms for approximately 86% of angiosperm evolutionary history. Wind pollination evolved at least 42 times, with few reversals back to animal pollination. Transitions between insect and vertebrate pollination were more frequent: vertebrate pollination evolved...
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Scientific Data, 2021
We introduce the AusTraits database - a compilation of values of plant traits for taxa in the Aus... more We introduce the AusTraits database - a compilation of values of plant traits for taxa in the Australian flora (hereafter AusTraits). AusTraits synthesises data on 448 traits across 28,640 taxa from field campaigns, published literature, taxonomic monographs, and individual taxon descriptions. Traits vary in scope from physiological measures of performance (e.g. photosynthetic gas exchange, water-use efficiency) to morphological attributes (e.g. leaf area, seed mass, plant height) which link to aspects of ecological variation. AusTraits contains curated and harmonised individual- and species-level measurements coupled to, where available, contextual information on site properties and experimental conditions. This article provides information on version 3.0.2 of AusTraits which contains data for 997,808 trait-by-taxon combinations. We envision AusTraits as an ongoing collaborative initiative for easily archiving and sharing trait data, which also provides a template for other nationa...
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Insectes Sociaux, 2021
Many animals deposit odours in their environment, either intentionally or unintentionally, that r... more Many animals deposit odours in their environment, either intentionally or unintentionally, that remain at a site after the animal itself has left. These odours may be exploited by other species as social information, and thus have a significant role in structuring species interactions, even where the species involved rarely interact directly. Here we show that three species of Australian social stingless bees (Meliponini) not only detect the odours left behind by conspecifics, but also those of an abundant introduced competitor, the honey bee Apis mellifera (Apini). Foraging bees deposit pheromones that assist nestmates in locating profitable food sources (signals) and/or involuntary olfactory “footprints” (cues), both of which are vulnerable to exploitation by the foragers of other colonies. Using choice trials, we find that foragers of Tetragonula carbonaria, Tetragonula clypearis and Austroplebeia australis were more attracted to feeders recently used by, and thus carrying the odours of, their own species (both nestmates and non-nestmates) or honey bees, than to clean unused feeders. Australia’s stingless bees may learn to associate honey bee odours with food and exploit this to their advantage, or they may mistake honey bee odours for some other attractant and be misdirected. Our results suggest that introduced social insects could have a previously overlooked impact on resident communities, by modifying the olfactory landscape of shared resources in ways that alter native species’ foraging behaviour.
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Scientific Reports, 2016
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Journal of Biogeography
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Aim: Climate shapes the composition and function of plant communities globally, but it remains un... more Aim: Climate shapes the composition and function of plant communities globally, but it remains unclear how this influence extends to floral traits. Flowering phenology, or the time period in which a species flowers, has well-studied relationships with climatic signals at the species level but has rarely been explored at a cross-community and continental scale. Here, we characterise the distribution of flowering periods (months of flowering) across continental plant communities encompassing six biomes, and determine the influence of climate on community flowering period lengths. Location: Australia. Taxon: Flowering plants. Methods: We combined plant composition and abundance data from 629 standardised floristic surveys (AusPlots) with data on flowering period from the AusTraits database and additional primary literature for 2,983 species. We assessed abundance-weighted community mean flowering periods across biomes and tested their relationship with climatic annual means and the pre...
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Molecular Ecology
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Biological Journal of the Linnean Society
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Biological Journal of the Linnean Society
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Papers by Ruby E Stephens