Abstract
Declines in pollinator populations have made monitoring pollinators, in particular bees, increasingly important. There is general agreement among practitioners that using a mix of trap colours is important, but the empirical evidence to support this is scattered. During studies of bees in forestry cutovers, large differences were noted in capture rate among white, blue, and yellow pan traps. Pooled data from collections in cutovers and commercial cranberry fields demonstrated significant differences in the effect of trap colour, with the largest numbers captured in white traps, and the fewest in yellow, but only for the genus Bombus Latreille (Hymenoptera: Apidae). The colour preference was consistent with the spectral sensitivity of Bombus, and the visible reflectance spectra of the traps. A literature review suggested that among eusocial bees, Apis Linnaeus (Hymenoptera: Apidae) are more attracted to white traps and Bombus are more attracted to blue traps, while non-eusocial bees with a variety of social structures are more attracted to yellow. Among the non-eusocial bees, Halictidae were somewhat attracted to blue, while Andrenidae were not. This supports the common practice of using white, blue, and yellow traps when surveying bees to ensure adequate taxonomic representation.
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Acknowledgements
This work was part of research projects supported by an Ignite Grant from the Research and Development Corporation of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Vice President Grenfell Campus Research Fund, and Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Limited. Dr. Robert Scott (Grenfell Campus, MUN) performed the reflectance measurements.
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Supplementary Table S1. Colour preferences of bees recorded in fifteen studies. Traps are some variation of pan traps unless otherwise indicated. Colour preference refers to the trap colour collecting the largest number of individuals; if there was no significant difference in collection rate between two colours, they are indicated as equal, e.g. B = W (DOCX 24 KB)
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Sircom, J., Arul Jothi, G. & Pinksen, J. Monitoring bee populations: are eusocial bees attracted to different colours of pan trap than other bees?. J Insect Conserv 22, 433–441 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-018-0071-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-018-0071-y