Competition among pollinators: quantification of available resources
Abstract
In a study of the bee community of short-grass prairie Tepedino and Stanton (1981) attempted to verify several predictions of competition theory by comparing abundances of bees and flowers. Their results were inconclusive suggesting, they said, that bees do not continuously compete for floral resources. We questioned their use of the number of open flowers as a measure of resource availability to bees because it is the nectar contained within those flowers that is the resource actually utilized. In two Rocky Mountain meadows we attempted to correlate bumblebee abundance with both the number of available flowers and the number of flowers multiplied by their 24 hour nectar production rates. Our results demonstrated that merely using floral abundance as an estimate of resource availability can be very misleading. The more time consuming method of quantifying the resources actually used by bees should be performed if meaningful conclusions concerning competition are to be drawn.
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