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How landscape, pollen intake and pollen quality affect colony growth in Bombus terrestris

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Abstract

Context

Abundance and diversity of bumblebees have been declining over the past decades. To successfully conserve bumblebee populations, we need to understand how landscape characteristics affect the quantity and quality of floral resources collected by colonies and subsequently colony performance.

Objectives

We therefore investigated how amount and composition of pollen collected by buff-tailed bumblebee Bombus terrestris colonies was affected by the surrounding landscape (i.e. the proportion of forest, urban, semi-natural habitats) and how they were related to colony growth.

Methods

Thirty B. terrestris colonies were placed at grassland sites differing in surrounding landscape. Colonies were established in spring when availability of flowering plants was highest, and their weight gain was monitored for 1 month. We additionally recorded the quantity and compared plant taxonomic composition and nutritional quality (i.e. amino acid composition) of pollen stored.

Results

Bumblebee colonies varied little in the pollen spectra collected despite differences in surrounding landscape composition. They collected on average 80 % of pollen from woody plants, with 34 % belonging to the genus Acer. Early colony growth positively correlated with total amount of woody pollen and protein collected and decreased with increasing proportions of semi-natural habitats and total amino acid concentrations.

Conclusions

Our results suggest that woody plant species represent highly important pollen sources for the generalist forager B. terrestris early in the season. We further show that colony growth of B. terrestris is predominantly affected by the quantity, not quality, of forage, indicating that several abundant plant species flowering throughout the bumblebees’ foraging season may cover the colonies’ nutritional needs.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Christoph Scherber for his help with structural equation modeling. We thank Markus Fischer, Eduard Linsenmair, Dominik Hessenmöller, Jens Nieschulze, Daniel Prati, Ingo Schöning, François Buscot, Ernst-Detlef Schulze, Wolfgang W. Weisser and the late Elisabeth Kalko for their role in setting up the Biodiversity Exploratories project. We thank Simone Pfeiffer, Maren Gleisberg, Martin Fellendorf, Ralf Lauterbach, Martin Gorke, Dominik Hessenmöller, Gunnar Korte, Claudia Seilwinder, Jörg Hailer, Ulf Pommer, and various helpers of the local management teams for their work in maintaining the plot and project infrastructure. Fieldwork permits were given by the responsible state environmental offices of Baden-Württemberg (according to § 72 BbgNatSchG). We are further grateful for the comments of two anonymous reviewers which helped to substantially improve the manuscript. This work was supported by grants from the German Research Foundation (DFG Projects: EL 249/7-1 and LE 2750/1-1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Animal Ecology, Evolution and Biodiversity, Bochum University, Universitätsstraße 150, 44780, Bochum, Germany

    Wiebke Kämper, Patrizia K. Werner & Thomas Eltz

  2. Department of Biology, Ecological Networks, Technical University of Darmstadt, Schnittspahnstraße 3, 64287, Darmstadt, Germany

    Andrea Hilpert & Nico Blüthgen

  3. Agroecology, Georg-August-University, Grisebachstr. 6, 37077, Göttingen, Germany

    Catrin Westphal

  4. Department of Zoology III, Würzburg University, Biozentrum, Am Hubland, 97074, Würzburg, Germany

    Sara Diana Leonhardt

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  1. Wiebke Kämper
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  2. Patrizia K. Werner
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  3. Andrea Hilpert
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  5. Nico Blüthgen
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  6. Thomas Eltz
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  7. Sara Diana Leonhardt
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Correspondence to Wiebke Kämper or Sara Diana Leonhardt.

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Kämper, W., Werner, P.K., Hilpert, A. et al. How landscape, pollen intake and pollen quality affect colony growth in Bombus terrestris . Landscape Ecol 31, 2245–2258 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-016-0395-5

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