RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Dancing bees evaluate agricultural forage resources as inferior to central urban land
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2019.12.19.882076
DO 10.1101/2019.12.19.882076
A1 Ash E. Samuelson
A1 Roger Schürch
A1 Ellouise Leadbeater
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/12/19/2019.12.19.882076.abstract
AB Recent evidence suggests that flower-rich areas within cities could play an important role in pollinator conservation, but direct comparison of agricultural and urban areas has proved challenging to perform over large scales. Here we use the waggle dances of honeybees (Apis mellifera L.) to evaluate floral resource availability over the entire season at deeply urban or agricultural sites. Through analysis of 3378 dances that were performed over two years by 20 colonies in SE England, we show that foraging trip distance is consistently lower at urban sites across the entire season, implying a higher availability of forage in heavily urbanized areas. Urban bees also collected nectar with a higher mean sugar content. From the self-reported perspective of a generalist pollinator, the modern agricultural landscapes that we studied provided insufficient and transient resources relative to heavily urbanised areas, which may represent important refuges within an impoverished landscape.