Climate change does not only affect single species in isolation but entire ecological networks, most often consisting of hundreds of species and their interactions. Since climate changes are strongest in the Arctic we expect to see the most severe natural disturbances here. Fourteen years ago, a 2-year study of an entire network of 31 plant species interacting with 76 pollinating animal species at Zackenberg, NE Greenland was conducted (e.g., Olesen et al. 2008). Since then climate change has caused strong responses from both plants and animals. The previous study gives us an un-foreseen but unique opportunity to analyze climatically induced changes at network level by repeating the previous study and to perform a comparative analysis of these network data, spanning a 14-year period in which the arctic environment has experienced strong climatic changes. The insight gained may tell us how highly complex natural systems react to climate change globally now and in the future.

My Ph.D. dissertation (2003-2008) produced a comprehensive molecular phylogeny of the stingless bees, thereby providing an evolutionary framework for the study of the unusually diverse behavior of stingless bees. My first contribution (Rasmussen & Cameron, 2007) to the stingless bee phylogeny was an analysis based on four genes including both Old and New World taxa. Through this I established that the large genus Trigona is not monophyletic. I also performed phylogenetic analysis of the inter- and infrageneric relationships of Old World stingless bees (i.e. Afrotropical, Indo-Malayan, and Australasian) with a nearly complete sampling of genera.

The relationships among all supra-specific groups of stingless bees (202 taxa) were later analyzed using the four above genes and an additional nuclear gene. A recurrent issue from my previous research was the low support of the basal splits, which I addressed by sequencing four additional nuclear genes for a diverse subset of 17 stingless bee taxa. The phylogeny provided evidence for geographic origin of current major clades through the application of dispersal-vicariance analysis and Bayesian divergence time methods (Rasmussen & Cameron, 2010).

Stingless bees exhibit extraordinary variation in nest architecture within and among species and my research also involved a study of the evolutionary transitions of these behaviors. In particular I tested for phylogenetic association of nest traits for the Neotropical stingless bee genus Trigona s.s. (Rasmussen & Camargo, 2008). Fifteen characteristics of the nest architecture were coded and tested for phylogenetic association, including such characters as type of nesting substrate, nest construction material, and necrophagy.

Finally, with a strongly supported phylogeny available, I wanted an up-to-date, comprehensive taxonomic and biological catalog of the stingless bees in order to -in the future- synthesize comparative evolutionary, ecological, and behavioral research on the group. I compiled such catalog for the Indo-Malayan/Australasian taxa (Rasmussen, 2008) to provide an index to previous studies in taxonomy, behavioral research, and pollination ecology, thus consolidating the existing knowledge in an accessible format. The effort has been made in concert with recently published catalogs for Neotropical and Afrotropical taxa, thus providing the final contribution for a complete catalog coverage of stingless bee literature.