Receptiveness of Foraging Wild Bees to Exotic Landscape Elements

Wild pollinators provide important services in both wild and human-dominated ecosystems, yet this group may be threatened by widespread anthropogenic landscape change. We explored the responses of wild bees to exotic floral species and novel habitat in a fragmented, suburban landscape using pollen g...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American midland naturalist 2009-10, Vol.162 (2), p.253-265
Main Authors: Hinners, Sarah J, Hjelmroos-Koski, Mervi K
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bees
Behavior
Bumblebees
Evolutionary biology
Flowers & plants
Foraging
Habitat fragmentation
Habitat loss
Habitats
Herbivores
Insect pollination
Insect-plant relationships
Landscapes
Management
Methods
Native species
Plant reproduction
Plants
Pollen
Pollinating insects
Research s
Spatial behavior in animals
Studies
Success
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Wild pollinators provide important services in both wild and human-dominated ecosystems, yet this group may be threatened by widespread anthropogenic landscape change. We explored the responses of wild bees to exotic floral species and novel habitat in a fragmented, suburban landscape using pollen grain identification. Pollen loads from bee specimens collected in 13 suburban grassland fragments in Denver, Colorado were sampled and compared with a pollen reference collection. Averaged across two seasonal sampling rounds, 45% of the bee-borne pollen grains were identified to the species level. Wild bees in this system were very receptive to using alien plants for pollen foraging; at least 45% of pollen sampled from bee specimens consisted of non-native pollen grains. During peak flowering in early summer, bees obtained at least 32% of their pollen resources from within-fragment sources and at least 7.5% from surrounding suburban residential yards. In midsummer, within-fragment sources represented 58% of pollen sampled while yards dropped to 1.5%. These bees appear to be more accepting of exotic floral species than of exotic habitat types (yards). The advantages and disadvantages of pollen load analysis for movement studies are discussed.
ISSN:0003-0031
1938-4238
DOI:10.1674/0003-0031-162.2.253