Effects of Temperature and Competitor Abundance on Bumble Bee Foraging
Abstract
The role of plant-pollinator interactions is essential for successful plant and pollinator reproduction, thus influencing community assembly of both plants and animals within an ecosystem. Pollinators exhibit competitive behavior in order to collect adequate quantities of pollen and nectar, and bees in particular heavily rely on these floral resources to provide for their colony. Pollinator competition can largely determine the makeup of plant and pollinator species within an ecosystem, as well as how their competitive behavior may contribute to the function of an ecosystem as a whole. With climate change on the rise, the dynamics of pollination competition may be disrupted and negatively affect the ecosystem. Therefore, it is important that we gain a better understanding of how environmental conditions influence the foraging and competitive behavior exhibited in pollinators so that we can predict how climate change might cause these behaviors to shift. This study focuses on the native bumble bees of the Rocky Mountains, and how temperature and time of day may influence the intensity of competitive behavior in the bumble bees. Data was collected at five different sites during the summer when the bumble bees were out foraging. Three rounds of bumble bee surveys were conducted at each site visit, accounting for the differences in observed behavior throughout the day. Our results suggest that competitor abundance plays the largest role in the bumble bees’ competitive behavior, however this factor may affect different Bombus species in different ways or more significantly than others. Our data collection was limited due to constraints of time, however we were still able to find significant results for the Bombus species that were captured the most, suggesting that additional Bombus species may be found to follow similar trends if we have enough data on them.
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References (10)
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