• Energy Research

Endemic and disjunct populations of vascular plants and cryptogams occurring in the Chic-Choc Mountains on the Gaspé Peninsula in eastern Québec, Canada, have been attracting botanists for over a century. Although controversial, these ancient mountains have been hypothesized to have been nunataks during the Wisconsin glaciation in part because they contain vascular plants that are not known to colonize nearby mountains with similar environments that were not thought to be nunataks. To determine whether there are lichen species that have the same pattern as the vascular plants, we examined the North American distribution of all the approximately 600 lichens known from the Chic-Chocs. Fifteen Arctic-alpine species were found to reach the edge of their southeastern North American range in the Chic-Chocs. Six of these species are not known to occur again for over 1000 km to the north. These results provide an additional layer of biogeographic knowledge about the unusual flora of the Chic-Chocs and lend some support to the hypothesis that the Chic-Chocs might have been nunataks during the last glacial period. Any Arctic-alpine species occurring in the Chic-Chocs are good candidates for monitoring the effects of climate change, but the 15 lichen species that reach their southeastern limit in this range might be the most vulnerable.

AbstractGlobal pollinator declines threaten food production and natural ecosystems. The drivers of declines are complicated and driven by numerous factors such as pesticide use, loss of habitat, rising pathogens due to commercial bee keeping and climate change. Halting and reversing pollinator declines will require a multidisciplinary approach and international cooperation. Here, we summarize 20 presentations given in the symposium ‘Protecting pollinators and our food supply: Understanding and managing threats to pollinator health’ at the 19th Congress of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects in San Diego, 2022. We then synthesize the key findings and discuss future research areas such as better understanding the impact of anthropogenic stressors on wild bees.