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Too Low to Kill: Concentration of the Secondary Metabolite Ranunculin in Buttercup Pollen does not Affect Bee Larval Survival

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Abstract

Growing evidence suggests that the freely accessible pollen of some plants is chemically protected against pollen-feeding flower visitors. For example, a diet of pollen from buttercup plants (Ranunculus) recently was shown to have a deleterious effect on developing larvae of several bee species not specialized on Ranunculus. Numerous Ranunculus species contain ranunculin, the glucosyl hydrate form of the highly reactive and toxic lactone protoanemonin, that causes the toxicity of these plants. We tested whether the presence of ranunculin is responsible for the lethal effects of R. acris pollen on the larvae of two bee species that are not Ranunculus specialists. To investigate the effect on bee larval development, we added ranunculin to the pollen provisions of the Campanula specialist bee Chelostoma rapunculi and the Asteraceae specialist bee Heriades truncorum, and allowed the larvae to feed on these provisions. We quantified ranunculin in pollen of R. acris and in brood cell provisions collected by the Ranunculus specialist bee Chelostoma florisomne. We demonstrated that although ranunculin was lethal to both tested bee species in high concentrations, the concentration in the pollen of R. acris was at least fourfold lower than that tolerated by the larvae of C. rapunculi and H. truncorum in the feeding experiments. Ranunculin concentration in the brood cells of C. florisomne was on average even twentyfold lower than that in Ranunculus pollen, suggesting that a mechanism different from ranunculin intoxication accounts for the larval mortality reported for bees not specialized on Ranunculus pollen.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Michael H. Benn (University of Calgary, Canada) for the gift of a substantial sample of ranunculin; Renato Zenobi and Louis Bertschi (MS service of the Laboratory of Organic Chemistry, ETH Zurich) for support and chemical analyses; the staff of the Neolithic village of Gletterens for providing bee nests; Bettina Gutbrodt and Mare Haider for technical support, and Heather Kirk and three anonymous reviewers for useful comments on the manuscript.

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  1. Rafal Piskorski

    Present address: Innovative Environmental Services (IES) Ltd., Benkenstrasse 260, 4108, Witterswil, Switzerland

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ETH Zurich, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Applied Entomology, Schmelzbergstrasse 9/LFO, 8092, Zurich, Switzerland

    Claudio Sedivy, Rafal Piskorski, Andreas Müller & Silvia Dorn

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  1. Claudio Sedivy
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  2. Rafal Piskorski
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  3. Andreas Müller
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  4. Silvia Dorn
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Correspondence to Andreas Müller.

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Sedivy, C., Piskorski, R., Müller, A. et al. Too Low to Kill: Concentration of the Secondary Metabolite Ranunculin in Buttercup Pollen does not Affect Bee Larval Survival. J Chem Ecol 38, 996–1002 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10886-012-0153-3

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