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Male and female bees show large differences in floral preference

View ORCID ProfileMichael Roswell, View ORCID ProfileJonathan Dushoff, View ORCID ProfileRachael Winfree
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/432518
Michael Roswell
1Graduate program in ecology and evolution, Rutgers University, 14 College Farm Road, New Brunswick, NJ 08904
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Jonathan Dushoff
2Department of biology, McMaster University, 1280 Main St. West, Hamilton, Ontario ON L8S 4K1
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Rachael Winfree
3Department of ecology, evolution, and natural resources, Rutgers University, 14 College Farm Road, New Brunswick, NJ 08904
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Abstract

  1. Intraspecific variation in foraging niche can drive food web dynamics and ecosystem processes. Field studies and theoretical analysis of plant-pollinator interaction networks typically focus on the partitioning of the floral community between pollinator species, with little attention paid to intraspecific variation among plants or foraging bees. In other systems, male and female animals exhibit different, cascading, impacts on interaction partners. Although the foraging ecology of male bees is little known, we expect foraging preferences to differ between male and female bees, which could strongly impact plant-pollinator interaction outcomes.

  2. We designed an observational study to evaluate the strength and prevalence of sexually dimorphic foraging preferences in bees.

  3. We observed bees visiting flowers in semi-natural meadows in New Jersey, USA. To detect differences in flower use against a shared background resource availability, we maximized the number of interactions observed within narrow spatio-temporal windows. To distinguish observed differences in bee use of flower species, which can reflect abundance patterns and sampling effects, from underlying differences in bee preferences, we analyzed our data with both a permutation-based null model and random effects models.

  4. We found that the diets of male and female bees of the same species were often as dissimilar as the diets of bees of different species. Furthermore, we demonstrate differences in preference between male and female bees, and identify plant species that are particularly attractive to each sex. We show that intraspecific differences in preference can be robustly identified within interactions between hundreds of species, without precisely quantifying resource availability, and despite high phenological turnover.

  5. Given the large differences in flower use and preference between male and female bees, ecological sex differences should be integrated into studies of bee demography, plant pollination, and coevolutionary relationships between flowers and insects.

Footnotes

  • mroswell.rutgers{at}gmail.com

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted November 16, 2018.
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Male and female bees show large differences in floral preference
Michael Roswell, Jonathan Dushoff, Rachael Winfree
bioRxiv 432518; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/432518
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Male and female bees show large differences in floral preference
Michael Roswell, Jonathan Dushoff, Rachael Winfree
bioRxiv 432518; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/432518

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