Plant-Pollinator Interactions and Foraging Behavior Research
studies how pollinators like bees interact with flowering plants, examining foraging patterns, pollen chemistry, and plant density effects to understand critical ecological relationships that support both plant reproduction and pollinator populations.
Concept (33) →
plant-pollinator mutualism
Mutually beneficial interaction between flowering plants and their animal pollinators where plants provide nectar/pollen rewards and animals provide p...
pollinator foraging behavior
Behavioral choices and time allocation patterns of pollinators when visiting flowers, including flower choice, handling time, and visitation frequency
pollen provision composition
reproductive success
Plant fitness measured through various components including fruit set, seed production, and seeds per plant
nectar robbing
Foraging behavior where floral visitors bypass the floral opening and access nectar by chewing holes in nectar spurs or using pre-existing holes
floral visitation rate
Frequency of pollinator visits to flowers measured as visits per individual per minute or visits per flower per minute
pollen limitation
Reduced seed set resulting from insufficient pollen receipt, particularly affecting females when hermaphrodite density and frequency increases
herbivory
The consumption of plant material by animals
fitness consequences
effects of behavioral or life history decisions on individual reproductive success and survival
drought stress
Physiological stress experienced by plants due to reduced water availability that can harm fitness by inducing leaf loss, reducing flower size, and de...
Show 23 more concepts
pollination effectiveness
The ability of an organism to successfully transfer pollen between flowers for plant reproduction
pollinator-mediated selection
Natural selection on floral traits that occurs through differential pollinator visitation and resulting differences in reproductive success
floral abundance
The total number of flowers available as nectar and pollen resources measured as flowers per meter
compensatory herbivory
The hypothesis that predispersal seed predators preferentially attack high-quality flowers, potentially masking negative effects of environmental stre...
flower color
seed production
nectar traits
Nectar volume, nectar sugar concentration, and total nectar sugar content measured from individual flowers
pollinator decline
Widespread reductions in pollinator abundance and diversity observed globally, attributed to multiple environmental stressors
stamen length
seed retention
bee conservation
Management strategies and techniques aimed at supporting and maintaining bee populations and their ecological functions.
structural equation modeling
Statistical approach allowing estimation of directional relationships among variables and comparison of direct versus indirect effects
seed set
trophic synchrony
Temporal alignment between consumer energy requirements and food source availability across trophic levels
network nestedness
The degree to which specialists interact with subsets of species that generalists interact with, measured by weighted NODF
floral resources
Availability of flowering plants that provide pollen and nectar for bee reproduction, quantified as floral density in standardized plots
foraging efficiency
A measure of how successful a bird is at food acquisition, quantified through observations as foraging rate (number of forages divided by time observe...
heterospecific pollen transfer
Transfer of pollen between different plant species that share generalist pollinators, often resulting in reproductive costs through pollen loss and re...
floral morphology
The structural characteristics of flowers, categorized as complex or open based on accessibility to pollinators
Resource Availability Hypothesis
Predicts that fast-growing plants in high resource environments invest less in defense because they can easily regrow after herbivory
nectar-inhabiting bacteria
Bacterial communities that colonize and live within floral nectar, potentially affecting nectar chemistry and pollinator behavior
compensatory response
The ability of plants to tolerate or compensate for herbivore damage through increased growth or reproduction
maternal investment
Investment by female bees in offspring through pollen provision size and number of brood cells produced
Protocol (11) →
Bees per person hour sampling
Systematic observation of plant-pollinator interactions along established transects with standardized time intervals to capture natural temperature va...
pollinator observation
Systematic observation of plant-pollinator interactions along fixed transects with timed observations and selective insect capture for identification....
pollination exclusion experiment
Experimental addition of outcross pollen to flowers to test whether natural pollination limits plant reproductive success, comparing reproductive outp...
Hemacytometer pollen counting
Collection and microscopic analysis of pollen grains deposited on wildflower stigmas using pink fuchsin gel mounting and reference collection for iden...
Bagged flower nectar accumulation
Comprehensive measurement of floral traits (corolla dimensions, anther insertion, petal color, nectar production) and vegetative traits (specific leaf...
Artificial nectar robbing
A method to experimentally add nectar rewards to naturally pollen-only rewarding flowers by depositing measured volumes of artificial nectar solution ...
Belt transect method
Belt transect method for censusing lupine populations and collecting inflorescences for morphological analysis across sympatric and allopatric sites. ...
seed count and mass measurement
Comprehensive evaluation of seed production including total fruit counts, viable seed counts per fruit, individual seed mass measurements, and visual/...
Refractometric nectar analysis
A field-based protocol for extracting nectar from flowers that have been exposed to bee visitation, then quantifying ethanol content using enzyme-base...
Seed predation assessment (Polemoniaceae)
Weekly monitoring of fly oviposition on flowers and assessment of fruit damage by predispersal seed predators including fly larvae and caterpillars to...
Publication (11) →
Pollen and vegetative secondary chemistry of three pollen-rewarding lupines
Norditerpene alkaloid concentrations in tissues and floral rewards of larkspurs and impacts on pollinators
Effects of flowering plant density on pollinator visitation, pollen receipt, and seed production in <i>Delphinium barbeyi</i>
Dose-dependent effects of nectar alkaloids in a montane plant-pollinator community
Nectar sugar limits larval growth of solitary bees (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae)
Secondary compounds in floral rewards of toxic rangeland plants: impacts on pollinators
Consequences of pollen defense compounds for pollinators and antagonists in a pollen rewarding plant
Towards a U.S. national program for monitoring native bees
The effects of adult removal on dispersal of yearling yellow-bellied marmots
Experimental manipulation of plant density and its effect on pollination and reproduction of two confamilial montane herbs
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Dataset (26) →
Experimental test of the combined effects of water availability and flowering time on pollinator visitation and seed set
Climate change is likely to alter both flowering phenology and water availability for plants. Either of these changes alone can affect pollinator vi...
Abundance richness and evenness data ALL BEES
data of combined bees (vouchered + released) to test for differences between repeatedly sampled sites and single sample sites regarding abundance (as ...
Data from: The effect of repeated, lethal sampling on wild bee abundance and diversity
1. Bee pollinators provide a critical ecosystem service to wild and agricultural plants but are reported to be declining world-wide due to anthropogen...
Abundance richness and evenness data VOUCHERED BEES
data of vouchered bees to test for differences between repeatedly sampled sites and single sample sites regarding abundance (as catch rate), rarefied ...
Data from: Quantifying direct vs. indirect effects of nectar robbers on male and female components of plant fitness
1. Plants interact simultaneously with both mutualists and antagonists. While webs of plant-animal interactions in natural systems can be highly compl...
Community-level flowering & fitness data across an elevational gradient, Rocky Mountain Biological Lab, 2021-2022
We collected data at three sites in Washington Gulch near the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL, Gothic, Colorado, USA) from June to August 2...
Yearly bee catch data
data used to calculate mean catch rates per sampling period per year by each sampling method.
data for functional group analyses
data of vouchered bees to test for differences between repeatedly sampled sites and single sample sites regarding abundance functional group compositi...
Data from: Facilitated exploitation of pollination mutualisms: fitness consequences for plants
Mutualisms are only rarely one-to-one interactions: each species generally interacts with multiple mutualists. Exploitation is ubiquitous in mutualism...
Ready for NMDS VOUCHERED BEES ONLY
sample day by species matrix ready for NMDS analysis.
Show 16 more datasets
Supplementary material from "Life-history traits predict responses of wild bees to climate variation"
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Data from: Attract or defend? Pollen and vegetative secondary chemistry of three pollen-rewarding lupines
PREMISE OF THE STUDY: Optimal Defense Theory predicts that selection should drive plants to differentially allocate resources for herbivore defense to...
Data from: Influence of plant reproductive systems on the evolution of hummingbird pollination
Many hummingbird-pollinated plant species evolved from bee-pollinated ancestors independently in many different habitats in North and South America. T...
Shifts in water availability mediate plant-pollinator interactions
Altered precipitation patterns associated with anthropogenic climate change are expected to have many effects on plants and insect pollinators, but it...
Pollinator visitation rate and effectiveness vary with flowering phenology
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Data from: Foraging strategy predicts foraging economy in a facultative secondary nectar robber
In mutualistic interactions, the decision whether to cooperate or cheat depends on the relative costs and benefits of each strategy. In pollination mu...
Pre-dispersal seed predation obscures the detrimental effect of dust on wildflower reproduction - fruit data
Premise of the Research. Seed production by flowering plants depends on abiotic and biotic factors whose interacting effects may be hidden. We previ...
Lupine alkaloid data
This is an Excel file containing one sheet with 23 columns. Each row represents the data and metadata for a single tissue sample from a single individ...
Impacts of beekeeping on wild bee diversity and pollination networks in the Aegean Archipelago
Maintaining the diversity of wild bees is a priority for preserving ecosystem function and promoting stability and productivity of agroecosystems. How...
Temperature and floral density data from seven study sites around the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, Colorado: 2013-2021
Data were collected as part of a study of population dynamics of solitary, cavity-nesting Hymenoptera. Nesting structures (“trap-nests”) were establis...
Data from: Foraging efficiency and size matching in a plant – pollinator community: the importance of sugar content and tongue length
A longstanding question in ecology is how species interactions are structured within communities. Although evolutionary theory predicts close size mat...
Pollinator visitation on Na-enriched plants in a subalpine meadow
Many plants have evolved nutrient rewards to attract pollinators to flowers, but most research has focused on the sugar content of floral nectar resou...
Data from: Experimental species removals impact the architecture of pollination networks
Mutualistic networks are key for the creation and maintenance of biodiversity, yet are threatened by global environmental change. Most simulation mode...
Heiling.et.al.Oikos.2018.data
An Excel workbook of data for Heiling et al 2018. First sheet is a metadata file, all other sheets are arrange chronologically. Sheet names describe t...
Bumble bee occurrences of North America from 1805–2020
Bumble bee occurrence data used for "Climate change winners and losers among North American bumble bees": These data comprise 649 407 specimen records...
Data from: Coordinated species importation policies are needed to reduce serious invasions globally: the case of alien bumblebees in South America
The global trade of species promotes diverse human activities but also facilitates the introduction of potentially invasive species into new environme...