Abstract
A key question in pollination biology is that of how pollinators identify and choose foraging patches. Several approaches have been employed for this, including field studies and large greenhouse flight chambers. Most methods used to date are limited, though, by reliance on a combination of artificial flowers, large spatial scales, or lack of spatially distinct floral patches. To address this issue, we designed and tested a y-maze flight arena and tested it using the bumblebee Bombus impatiens and canola plants. Our results indicate that the system is not biased by environmental conditions, or by an innate “handedness” of Bombus impatiens. We found that bees made all the expected patch choices when presented with soil, plants without flowers, or plants with flowers. This new method is important and useful as it allows researchers to ask questions of both plant health and insect behavior and the chamber system is modular allowing for simple changes to the setup to focus on different questions.
Highlights
• Y-maze flight arena was designed to evaluate foraging behavior on intact plants.
• No evidence of side preference in individual bees.
• Behaviors observed in the y-maze appear to correspond to behaviors observed in other settings.
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Data Availability
Data is available in the Mendeley Data Repository accessed through https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/p8635n3x3t/1.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Alicia Caplan, Farrah Fischer, and Dylan Sjolie for assistance in data collection and analysis. We thank Meghan Vankosky, Adam Jewiss-Gaines, Berenice Romero, and Dylan Sjolie for comments on this manuscript. This research was funded by an NSERC Discovery Grant to SMP.
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This research was funded by the National Engineering and Research Council of Canada via a Discovery Grant.
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Caleb Bryan and Sean Prager designed all experiments. Caleb Bryan preformed the experiments and did data analysis. Caleb Bryan and Sean Prager prepared and reviewed the manuscript.
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Bryan, C.B., Prager, S.M. Developing and Evaluating a New Method and Apparatus for Examining Bumble Bee Foraging Behavior. J Insect Behav 36, 120–132 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-023-09827-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10905-023-09827-6