How to really help bees: nutrient demand and supply in a changing environment

Local and global changes affect which pollen varieties are available to bees in the environment. Therefore, wild bees cannot always access the optimally balanced diet required for their survival. Our feeding experiment showed that the nutritional quality of the pollen diet eaten by bee larvae is shaped not by pollen diversity but by a specific pollen species composition that results in specific nutrients being scarce or sufficient; this species composition influences bee survivability, development and mass. We proposed that the functioning of bee populations and communities may depend on the floral diversity of the local habitat, which determines whether a nutritionally balanced pollen diet obtained from specific species can be provided to bee larvae. Holistically considering wild bee fitness and health and the different characteristics of the food base at both the ecosystem and bee biology levels can provide new, important knowledge for conserving bees and their critical ecological roles.

• Publication year

  2021

• Venue

  Unknown venue

• Publication date

  2021-04-20

• Fields of study

  Biology, Business, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.21203/RS.3.RS-443806/V1
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Many small rather than few large sources identified in long-term bee pollen diets in agroecosystems

  2021cited by this paper
• Pollen sterols are associated with phylogeny and environment but not with pollinator guilds

  2021cited by this paper
• Stoichiometric niche, nutrient partitioning and resource allocation in a solitary bee are sex-specific and phosphorous is allocated mainly to the cocoon

  2021cited by this paper
• Mutualisms and (A)symmetry in Plant-Pollinator Interactions.

  2020influential reference
• Sexual Dimorphism in the Multielemental Stoichiometric Phenotypes and Stoichiometric Niches of Spiders

  2020cited by this paper
• Pollen composition significantly impacts the development and survival of the native small carpenter bee, Ceratina calcarata

  2020cited by this paper
• Mechanisms of Nutritional Resource Exploitation by Insects

  2020influential reference
• Beyond the Decline of Wild Bees: Optimizing Conservation Measures and Bringing Together the Actors

  2020cited by this paper
• The seventh macronutrient: how sodium shortfall ramifies through populations, food webs and ecosystems.

  2020cited by this paper
• Asteraceae Paradox: Chemical and Mechanical Protection of Taraxacum Pollen

  2020cited by this paper
• The bioelements, the elementome, and the biogeochemical niche.

  2019cited by this paper
• Impact of Biotic and Abiotic Stressors on Managed and Feral Bees

  2019cited by this paper
• Key pollen host plants provide balanced diets for wild bee larvae: A lesson for planting flower strips and hedgerows

  2019cited by this paper
• A Better Understanding of Bee Nutritional Ecology Is Needed to Optimize Conservation Strategies for Wild Bees—The Application of Ecological Stoichiometry

  2018cited by this paper
• Attractiveness of wildflower mixtures for wild bees and hoverflies depends on some key plant species

  2018cited by this paper
• Flower preferences and pollen transport networks for cavity‐nesting solitary bees: Implications for the design of agri‐environment schemes

  2018cited by this paper
• Ecological stoichiometry of the honeybee: Pollen diversity and adequate species composition are needed to mitigate limitations imposed on the growth and development of bees by pollen quality

  2017cited by this paper
• Within-population variation in the chemistry of life: the stoichiometry of sexual dimorphism in multiple dimensions

  2017cited by this paper
• Wild bee nutritional ecology: predicting pollinator population dynamics, movement, and services from floral resources.

  2017cited by this paper
• Effects of pollen species composition on the foraging behaviour and offspring performance of the mason bee Osmia bicornis (L.)

  2017cited by this paper
• Providing foraging resources for solitary bees on farmland: current schemes for pollinators benefit a limited suite of species

  2017cited by this paper
• Plant–insect interactions: the role of ecological stoichiometry

  2017cited by this paper
• The Multidimensional Stoichiometric Niche

  2017cited by this paper
• Variations in the Availability of Pollen Resources Affect Honey Bee Health

  2016cited by this paper
• Rising atmospheric CO2 is reducing the protein concentration of a floral pollen source essential for North American bees

  2016cited by this paper
• Pollinator-friendly management does not increase the diversity of farmland bees and wasps

  2015cited by this paper
• Delivery of crop pollination services is an insufficient argument for wild pollinator conservation

  2015cited by this paper
• Bee nutrition and floral resource restoration.

  2015cited by this paper
• Bee declines driven by combined stress from parasites, pesticides, and lack of flowers

  2015cited by this paper
• Hidden shift of the ionome of plants exposed to elevated CO2 depletes minerals at the base of human nutrition

  2014cited by this paper
• Museum specimens reveal loss of pollen host plants as key factor driving wild bee decline in The Netherlands

  2014cited by this paper
• Optimal progeny body size in a solitary bee, Osmia bicornis (Apoidea: Megachilidae)

  2014cited by this paper
• Pollen mixing in pollen generalist solitary bees: a possible strategy to complement or mitigate unfavourable pollen properties?

  2014cited by this paper
• Population and Community Ecology of Ontogenetic Development

  2013cited by this paper
• Mass-flowering crops enhance wild bee abundance

  2012cited by this paper
• Biological Stoichiometry: The Elements at the Heart of Biological Interactions

  2012cited by this paper
• From Populations to Ecosystems: Theoretical Foundations for a New Ecological Synthesis. Monographs in Population Biology, Volume 46. By Michel Loreau. Princeton (New Jersey): Princeton University Press. $99.50 (hardcover); $45.00 (paper). xv + 297 p.; ill.; index. ISBN: 978-0-691-12269-4 (hc); 978-0

  2011cited by this paper
• The nature of nutrition: a unifying framework

  2011cited by this paper
• The role of resources and risks in regulating wild bee populations.

  2011cited by this paper
• Pollination and Floral Ecology

  2011cited by this paper
• Sex in a material world: why the study of sexual reproduction and sex-specific traits should become more nutritionally-explicit

  2010cited by this paper
• Phosphate sensing

  2009cited by this paper
• Bee Pollination in Agricultural Eco-systems

  2008cited by this paper
• Multivariate Analysis of Ecological Data using CANCO

  2005cited by this paper
• Toward a stoichiometric framework for evolutionary biology

  2005cited by this paper
• Individual development of the red mason bee [Osmia rufa L., Megachilidae] under natural and laboratory conditions

  2002cited by this paper
• PAST: paleontological statistics software package for education and data analysis version 2.09

  2001cited by this paper
• Numerical Palaeobiology—Computer-based Modelling and Analysis of Fossils and their Distributions

  2000cited by this paper
• Isozymes of the Na-K-ATPase: heterogeneity in structure, diversity in function.

  1998cited by this paper
• Female size and fitness in the leaf‐cutter bee Megachile apicalis

  1997cited by this paper
• The Relation Between the Number of Species and the Number of Individuals in a Random Sample of an Animal Population

  1943cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.