Papers by Oksana Skaldina
European Journal of Endocrinology, 2020
Phenotypic diversity depends on genotype diversity, but the degree of genotype-by-environment int... more Phenotypic diversity depends on genotype diversity, but the degree of genotype-by-environment interaction is species-specific. Red wood ants (Formica s. str) are keystone species in boreal forests and very variable phenotypically. These variations are used for species identification and proposed as ecological indicators of anthropogenic disturbances. However, their origin is unknown. Here we aimed to provide a preliminary answer to this question and outline the direction for future research. We determined the interrelation between nest mate worker relatedness (kinship) and the diversity of colour morphs, degree of melanisation and size of the red wood ant, Formica rufa. In Finnish populations of this species polyandry, which involves multiple mating by queens is the principal determinant of the relatedness between workers. We hypothesised, that if phenotypic diversity is a result of genetic diversity, then polyandrous colonies should produce more phenotypically diverse workers. A to...
Annales Zoologici Fennici, 2018
Climate affects the survival and distribution of animals in various ways. Insects respond to the ... more Climate affects the survival and distribution of animals in various ways. Insects respond to the changing environment with shift in geographical range or with modification of phenotypic characteristics. Conspicuous melanin-based warning colouration may be a traded off against thermal melanism, as darker individuals often have a thermoregulatory advantage in cold climates. Our study focused on climate-related phenotypic adaptations in the common wasp, Vespula vulgaris, which is an important predator and plant pollinator. Wasp workers were collected from three regions in Finland (Oulu, Turku and Kuopio) using beer traps. The analyses of the individual body size, melanisation and fluctuating asymmetry (FA) of wasps from different climatic conditions revealed that thermoregulation may constrain aposematism in colder environments. Wasps from higher latitudes were darker and bigger, however this tendency was not linear and there might be some location-specific differences between coastal ...
Networking of Mutagens in Environmental Toxicology, 2019
Pollution is among the major anthropogenically induced drivers of environmental change. Heavy met... more Pollution is among the major anthropogenically induced drivers of environmental change. Heavy metals, released from industry and transport, can contaminate aquatic and terrestrial environments, inducing further ecotoxicological effects in different organisms. Insects play crucial ecological roles in maintenance of ecosystem structure and functioning and deliver such ecosystem services as food provisioning, plant pollination, dung burial, pest control and wildlife nutrition. Economically important terrestrial insects vary in an ability to accumulate heavy metals and demonstrate substantial difference in heavy metal tolerance. Despite global pollinator decline, only limited information is available about effects of heavy metals on wild bees. Ants, wasps and beetles are key-predatory insect groups in many terrestrial ecosystems. Responses in ants are investigated to higher extent than in wasps and revealed ecotoxicological effects of heavy metal pollution in beetles are biased to model...
European Journal of Endocrinology, 2017
Insects produce pigment and structural colours mainly for camouflage, signaling, physical protect... more Insects produce pigment and structural colours mainly for camouflage, signaling, physical protection or temperature regulation, and colour patterns can provide information about individual quality. Although the evolutionary function and nature of the variability in colouration are well known for many invertebrate taxa, there is little information on this topic for ants. We studied individual variation in the melanin-based colour traits of workers of the red wood ant, Formica rufa (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), from 20 colonies in Southern Finland and revealed the type of colouration in this species. First, using the threshold approach we distinguished between continuous and discrete variations. Furthermore, the analyses affirmed nine discrete morphs in terms of the colouration on the head and eight on the pronotum, while only continuous variation were found on the other body parts. Measuring the size of a particular colour pattern, the intensity of colour expression (degree of melanizat...
Networking of Mutagens in Environmental Toxicology, 2019
Current rates of economic development are interrelated with an increase in environmental pollutio... more Current rates of economic development are interrelated with an increase in environmental pollution. Among different contamination agents, modern insecticides such as neonicotinoids (NNIs) require precise attention in evaluation of losses and benefits. NNIs is relatively new class of systemic insecticides, being in use for about 20 years and embracing around 25% of global pesticide market. Currently there are several methods to apply NNIs to plants such as foliar sprays, soil drenches and seed treatments, and in recent years there has been a global shift towards seed treatment (seed dressing) rather than aerial spraying. The discovery of NNIs was considered as a milestone in the research on insecticides. Possessing chemical structure similar to nicotine and acting as agonists at insects’ acetylcholine receptors, NNIs demonstrate selective toxicity to invertebrates versus vertebrates. In addition, toxicity of NNIs in mammals is between one to three orders of magnitude lower than the t...
Arthropod-Plant Interactions, 2020
Insects provide key ecosystem services such as pollination, dung burial, soil enhancement, and pe... more Insects provide key ecosystem services such as pollination, dung burial, soil enhancement, and pest control. Global insect decline requires restoration of the plant–insect mutualistic interactions. By using magnet plants, it is possible to supply beneficial insects with better resource availability and create more sustainable habitats. Current management practices recommend using Umbellifers (Apiales, Apiaceae) in restoration projects. However, analyses of the structure and dynamics of entomofauna associated with this plant family is needed to facilitate practical actions. Here the attention is focused on species composition and seasonal dynamics of beneficial insects associated with sweet fennel Foeniculum vulgare (Apiaceae, Umbelliferae) in Crimea. A 2-year sampling campaign identified 60 insect species from 40 genera across 20 families and four orders: Hymenoptera, Diptera, Coleoptera, and Neuroptera. These insects represented the groups such as social wasps, bees, ants, bumble b...
Complementing ecotoxicity testing, a biomarker approach is widely used in ecological risk assessm... more Complementing ecotoxicity testing, a biomarker approach is widely used in ecological risk assessment programs. Biomarkers provide information about early warning biological responses to one or several chemical pollutants and can be revealed in an organism or its products. Biochemical, morphological or behavioral parameters of living organisms can be set to biomarkers of exposure, effect or susceptibility or biomarkers of defense and damage. This concept is more developed within aquatic than terrestrial ecotoxicology and social hymenopterans insect (ants, bees, bumblebees, wasps and termites), which are already actively used as bioindicator species, can be furtherly studied for revealing novel sets of biomarkers. They can provide sufficient information about ecosystem health because social insects usually occupy high trophic levels and are important predators, pollinators, scavengers and ecological engineers. Social insect colonies stay in a certain place (except army ants), which ma...
Insects
Insects vary in the degree of their adaptability to environmental contamination. Determining the ... more Insects vary in the degree of their adaptability to environmental contamination. Determining the responses with phenotypic plasticity in ecologically important species in polluted environments will ease further conservation and control actions. Here, we investigated morphological characteristics such as body size, body mass, and color of the common wasp Vespula vulgaris in an industrially polluted environment, considering different levels of metal pollution, and we studied the localization of contaminants in the guts of wasps. We revealed some differences in morphological characteristics and melanization of wasps collected in habitats with high, moderate, and low levels of pollution. The results indicated that V. vulgaris from highly polluted environments had reduced melanin pigmentation on the face but increased melanin pigmentation on the 2nd tergite of the abdomen. In addition, with transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX), we found metal ...
Oecologia
Insect colours assist in body protection, signalling, and physiological adaptations. Colours also... more Insect colours assist in body protection, signalling, and physiological adaptations. Colours also convey multiple channels of information. These channels are valuable for species identification, distinguishing individual quality, and revealing ecological or evolutionary aspects of animals’ life. During recent years, the emerging interest in colour research has been raised in social hymenopterans such as ants, wasps, and bees. These insects provide important ecosystem services and many of those are model research organisms. Here we review benefits that various colour types give to social insects, summarize practical applications, and highlight further directions. Ants might use colours principally for camouflage, however the evolutionary function of colour in ants needs more attention; in case of melanin colouration there is evidence for its interrelation with thermoregulation and pathogen resistance. Colours in wasps and bees have confirmed linkages to thermoregulation, which is inc...
Environmental Science and Pollution Research
We investigated the common wasp, Vespula vulgaris as a bioindicator and biomonitor of metals in t... more We investigated the common wasp, Vespula vulgaris as a bioindicator and biomonitor of metals in the industrial area. Using traps, we collected 257 yellowjackets along a pollution gradient in the Harjavalta Cu-Ni smelter in Southwest Finland. Our method detected metal elements such as arsenic (As), cobalt (Co), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), nickel (Ni), lead (Pb), zinc (Zn), and mercury (Hg) in wasps. The data analyses revealed V. vulgaris can be a proper indicator for As, Cd, Co, Cu, Ni, and Pb, rather than for Fe and Zn contamination. Body burdens of As, Cd, Co, Cu, Ni, and Pb decreased with an increase in distance from smelter. Enrichment factor (EF) followed the pattern Pb ˃ Cd ˃ As ˃ Co ˃ Cu ˃ Ni. The highest bioaccumulation (BAF) values were revealed for Cd (5.9) and the lowest for Pb (0.1). Specially designed software (WaspFacer) allowed revealing body burdens of As, Cd, Co, Cu, Ni, and Pb to be associated with rather smaller than more asymmetric facial colour markings in yellowjack...
Ecological Indicators, 2017
Abstract The search for ecological indicators of population well-being in natural and managed eco... more Abstract The search for ecological indicators of population well-being in natural and managed ecosystems is a crucial aspect of effective biomonitoring, conservation and nature protection. In long-term monitoring programs environmental stress has a measurable effect on naturally selected traits, such as body shape or size. However, changes in colouration provide information about early warning responses. The red wood ant Formica aquilonia is ecologically and territorially dominant among wood ant species in European boreal coniferous forest, and possesses variable red-brownish melanin-based cuticular colouration. F. aquilonia gynes, which are unfertilized queens, exhibit colour variability on the head, propodeum and abdomen, yet only head colour features allow setting clearly visible and symmetrical (left/right) classes of morphs. We studied phenotypic colour variability, melanisation and fluctuating asymmetry of colour patterns in faces of F. aquilonia gynes from natural (forest interiors) and disturbed (clear-cut zones and forest edges) habitats in Finland. We defined five variable, clearly visible and symmetrical (left/right) colour morphs of gynes' faces. Individuals of totally dark morph were present only in disturbed habitats. General analyses of melanisation degree showed, that gynes from disturbed habitats were significantly darker compared to those from forest interiors. Individuals from the same nest tend to have a similar degree of melanisation. The mean darkness of face was highest among individuals from forest-edge nests and the lowest from forest interior nests. In all habitat types the darkness of face increased with an increase in head width. Increase of cuticular melanisation in F. aquilonia gynes in disturbed habitats could be explained with the theory of thermal melanism and stress-induced immune defence. Although some amount of fluctuating asymmetry among left/right symmetrical colour variations on faces of F. aquilonia gynes was found, it was affected neither by habitat type nor by head width. Melanisation degree of red wood ants have a potency to be used as ecological indicator for the level of disturbance in managed coniferous forests and fluctuating asymmetry of colour variations in ants might be studied furtherly in cases of more severe environmental concerns.
PloS one, 2011
Understanding intraspecific geographic variation in animal signals poses a challenging evolutiona... more Understanding intraspecific geographic variation in animal signals poses a challenging evolutionary problem. Studies addressing geographic variation typically focus on signals used in mate-choice, however, geographic variation in intrasexual signals involved in competition is also known to occur. In Polistes dominulus paper wasps, females have black facial spots that signal dominance: individuals wasps with more complex 'broken' facial patterns are better fighters and are avoided by rivals. Recent work suggests there is dramatic geographic variation in these visual signals of quality, though this variation has not been explicitly described or quantified. Here, we analyze variation in P. dominulus signals across six populations and explore how environmental conditions may account for this variation. Overall, we found substantial variation in facial pattern brokenness across populations and castes. Workers have less broken facial patterns than gynes and queens, which have simi...
European Journal of Entomology, Jan 27, 2020
Phenotypic diversity depends on genotype diversity, but the degree of genotype-by-environment int... more Phenotypic diversity depends on genotype diversity, but the degree of genotype-by-environment interaction is speciesspecifi c. Red wood ants (Formica s. str) are keystone species in boreal forests and very variable phenotypically. These variations are used for species identifi cation and proposed as ecological indicators of anthropogenic disturbances. However, their origin is unknown. Here we aimed to provide a preliminary answer to this question and outline the direction for future research. We determined the interrelation between nest mate worker relatedness (kinship) and the diversity of colour morphs, degree of melanisation and size of the red wood ant, Formica rufa. In Finnish populations of this species polyandry, which involves multiple mating by queens is the principal determinant of the relatedness between workers. We hypothesised, that if phenotypic diversity is a result of genetic diversity, then polyandrous colonies should produce more phenotypically diverse workers. A total of 336 individuals belonging to 20 colonies were used for this study. We collected ants from coniferous and broadleaf forests in Finland, fi xed them in 96% alcohol, then digitally photographed, genotyped and analysed the phenotypic variation. The average colony nest mate worker relatedness was used as an estimate of the level of polyandry (more than one if r < 0.6). Our results revealed no associations between the diversity of the phenotypic traits measured and worker kinship in F. rufa. As a further step to reveal the degree of genotype-by-environment interaction in determining the colour traits of the red wood ant we suggest more sophisticated genetic studies indicating the heritability of phenotypic traits between patrilinies and testing of environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, UV-radiation, food and pollution.
Uploads
Papers by Oksana Skaldina