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Developing and Evaluating a New Method and Apparatus for Examining Bumble Bee Foraging Behavior by Caleb B. Bryan; Sean M. Prager is a Agricultural and Biological Sciences article available to read on EtoBox.

What is Developing and Evaluating a New Method and Apparatus for Examining Bumble Bee Foraging Behavior about?

A key question in pollination biology is that of how pollinators identify and choose foraging patches. Several approaches have been employed for this, including field studies and large greenhouse flight chambers. Most methods used to date are limited, though, by reliance on a combination of artificial flowers, large spatial scales, or lack of spatially distinct floral patches. To address this issue, we designed and tested a y-maze flight arena and tested it using the bumblebee Bombus impatiens and canola plants. Our results indicate that the system is not biased by environmental conditions, or by an innate "handedness" of Bombus impatiens. We found that bees made all the expected patch choices when presented with soil, plants without flowers, or plants with flowers. This new method is important and useful as it allows researchers to ask questions of both plant health and insect behavior and the chamber system is modular allowing for simple changes to the setup to focus on different questions. Highlights • Y-maze flight arena was designed to evaluate foraging behavior on intact plants.• No evidence of side preference in individual bees.• Behaviors observed in the y-maze appear to co

Who reads Developing and Evaluating a New Method and Apparatus for Examining Bumble Bee Foraging Behavior?

Author

Caleb B. Bryan; Sean M. Prager

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Published

2023

Language

EN

Field

Agricultural and Biological Sciences (Life Sciences)