Monitoring and detecting invasive species in anthromes: bees on the Faroe Islands

The Faroe Islands are an archipelago of islands located in the Atlantic Ocean, between Shetland and Iceland. Between the 4th and 6th century AD, people began to settle on the islands, bringing with them crops and livestock, and consequently changing the flora and vegetation of the islands drastically. Nowadays, noticeably absent from the native landscape are bees - honeybees, bumblebees and solitary bees alike. In the past ten years or so, however, more sightings of a few species of bumblebee have been recorded, most abundantly Bombus lucorum. This presents a unique opportunity to explore the invasion of such a species, noting any effects that these invaders may have on native flora and fauna. Typically, bumblebee invasions are coupled with displacement of native bee species, but in this scenario, there are no native bee species present.
Several tools will be used to explore the Faroese plant-pollinator network. This allows predictions to be made with the addition (or removal) of certain species resulting from bumblebee invasion. The majority of data collection will be done through monitoring, but environmental DNA (eDNA) will also be used as a tool to explore both the contemporary and historical landscape of the Faroe Islands. Records suggest that honeybees have been introduced previously, and the presence of flora that is well adapted to bee pollination also suggests this. Soil samples will be taken in areas where apiaries have been historically recorded and eDNA extracted in order to build a larger picture of the historical plant-pollinator network.
Some of the questions this project will therefore aim to address are the following:
1. How does the invasion of bumblebee species affect anthromes with no recorded native bees, with focus on:
o Native pollinators?
o Native flora?
2. Can historical bee eDNA be detected and quantified in peat core samples?
3. Has flora adapted to bee pollination in specific environmental systems evolved a different mechanism (e.g. autogamy?)