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Linking Pollination Effectiveness and Interspecific Displacement Success in Bees

  • Ecology, Behavior and Bionomics
  • Published:
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Abstract

Pollen deposition, a surrogate for bee efficiency, becomes increasingly important during their interspecific interactions. We conducted field experiments on highly cross-pollinated melon (Cucumis melo) and watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) in order to understand how bee species with different pollination efficiencies displace each other from floral resources. We observed significant displacement of less abundant but more efficient bees by the more abundant but less efficient bees in both crops, which may lead to deficient pollination. We did not find significant relationship of the bee displacement success and body size or abundance. Apis florea (Fabricius) and Nomia sp.2 (Latreille) had significantly more winner events in melon, while the former also had significantly more winner events in watermelon. A. florea was the only bee species that foraged mostly within the 1-m2 virtual area after their displacement, which may indicate its behavior of geitinogamous pollination. The two bee species, Ceratina sexmaculata (Smith) and Lasioglossum sp. (Curtis), were more sensitive to displacement as their proportion of leaving the 1-m2 virtual area was higher.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Dr. Alain Pauly (Department of Entomology, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels) for his help with identification of Nomia sp. The study was funded by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept of Entomology, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, Bahauddin Zakariya Univ, Multan, Pakistan

    M Ali, S Saeed & A Sajjad

  2. Dept of Statistics, Bahauddin Zakariya Univ, Multan, Pakistan

    A Akbar

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  1. M Ali
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  2. S Saeed
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  3. A Sajjad
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  4. A Akbar
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Correspondence to S Saeed.

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Edited by Fernando B Noll – UNESP

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Ali, M., Saeed, S., Sajjad, A. et al. Linking Pollination Effectiveness and Interspecific Displacement Success in Bees. Neotrop Entomol 44, 101–108 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13744-014-0259-0

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