TY  - JOUR
A1  - Trinkl, Moritz
A1  - Kaluza, Benjamin F.
A1  - Wallace, Helen
A1  - Heard, Tim A.
A1  - Keller, Alexander
A1  - Leonhardt, Sara D.
T1  - Floral Species Richness Correlates with Changes in the Nutritional Quality of Larval Diets in a Stingless Bee
JF  - Insects
N2  - Bees need food of appropriate nutritional quality to maintain their metabolic functions. They largely obtain all required nutrients from floral resources, i.e., pollen and nectar. However, the diversity, composition and nutritional quality of floral resources varies with the surrounding environment and can be strongly altered in human-impacted habitats. We investigated whether differences in plant species richness as found in the surrounding environment correlated with variation in the floral diversity and nutritional quality of larval provisions (i.e., mixtures of pollen, nectar and salivary secretions) composed by the mass-provisioning stingless bee Tetragonula carbonaria (Apidae: Meliponini). We found that the floral diversity of larval provisions increased with increasing plant species richness. The sucrose and fat (total fatty acid) content and the proportion and concentration of the omega-6 fatty acid linoleic acid decreased, whereas the proportion of the omega-3 fatty acid linolenic acid increased with increasing plant species richness. Protein (total amino acid) content and amino acid composition did not change. The protein to fat (P:F) ratio, known to affect bee foraging, increased on average by more than 40% from plantations to forests and gardens, while the omega-6:3 ratio, known to negatively affect cognitive performance, decreased with increasing plant species richness. Our results suggest that plant species richness may support T. carbonaria colonies by providing not only a continuous resource supply (as shown in a previous study), but also floral resources of high nutritional quality.
KW  - floral resources
KW  - plant-insect interactions
KW  - nutrition
KW  - biodiversity
KW  - bee decline
Y1  - 2020
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-200605
SN  - 2075-4450
VL  - 11
IS  - 2
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ruedenauer, Fabian A.
A1  - Raubenheimer, David
A1  - Kessner-Beierlein, Daniela
A1  - Grund-Mueller, Nils
A1  - Noack, Lisa
A1  - Spaethe, Johannes
A1  - Leonhardt, Sara D.
T1  - Best be(e) on low fat: linking nutrient perception, regulation and fitness
JF  - Ecology Letters
N2  - Preventing malnutrition through consuming nutritionally appropriate resources represents a challenge for foraging animals. This is due to often high variation in the nutritional quality of available resources. Foragers consequently need to evaluate different food sources. However, even the same food source can provide a plethora of nutritional and non‐nutritional cues, which could serve for quality assessment. We show that bumblebees, Bombus terrestris , overcome this challenge by relying on lipids as nutritional cue when selecting pollen. The bees ‘prioritised’ lipid perception in learning experiments and avoided lipid consumption in feeding experiments, which supported survival and reproduction. In contrast, survival and reproduction were severely reduced by increased lipid contents. Our study highlights the importance of fat regulation for pollen foraging bumblebees. It also reveals that nutrient perception, nutrient regulation and reproductive fitness can be linked, which represents an effective strategy enabling quick foraging decisions that prevent malnutrition and maximise fitness.
KW  - bee decline
KW  - foraging
KW  - nutrition
KW  - plant-insect interactions
KW  - pollen quality
KW  - PER
KW  - resource use
Y1  - 2020
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-208709
VL  - 23
IS  - 3
ER  -