Waggle dance distances as integrative indicators of seasonal foraging challenges.

Even as demand for their services increases, honey bees (Apis mellifera) and other pollinating insects continue to decline in Europe and North America. Honey bees face many challenges, including an issue generally affecting wildlife: landscape changes have reduced flower-rich areas. One way to help...

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Autores principales:	Margaret J Couvillon, Roger Schürch, Francis L W Ratnieks
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2014
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/375d32ea9e284316b5a09f269a7fd957
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:375d32ea9e284316b5a09f269a7fd9572021-11-18T08:25:12ZWaggle dance distances as integrative indicators of seasonal foraging challenges.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0093495https://doaj.org/article/375d32ea9e284316b5a09f269a7fd9572014-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/24695678/pdf/?tool=EBIhttps://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203Even as demand for their services increases, honey bees (Apis mellifera) and other pollinating insects continue to decline in Europe and North America. Honey bees face many challenges, including an issue generally affecting wildlife: landscape changes have reduced flower-rich areas. One way to help is therefore to supplement with flowers, but when would this be most beneficial? We use the waggle dance, a unique behaviour in which a successful forager communicates to nestmates the location of visited flowers, to make a 2-year survey of food availability. We "eavesdropped" on 5097 dances to track seasonal changes in foraging, as indicated by the distance to which the bees as economic foragers will recruit, over a representative rural-urban landscape. In year 3, we determined nectar sugar concentration. We found that mean foraging distance/area significantly increase from springs (493 m, 0.8 km2) to summers (2156 m, 15.2 km2), even though nectar is not better quality, before decreasing in autumns (1275 m, 5.1 km2). As bees will not forage at long distances unnecessarily, this suggests summer is the most challenging season, with bees utilizing an area 22 and 6 times greater than spring or autumn. Our study demonstrates that dancing bees as indicators can provide information relevant to helping them, and, in particular, can show the months when additional forage would be most valuable.Margaret J CouvillonRoger SchürchFrancis L W RatnieksPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 9, Iss 4, p e93495 (2014)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Margaret J Couvillon Roger Schürch Francis L W Ratnieks Waggle dance distances as integrative indicators of seasonal foraging challenges.
description	Even as demand for their services increases, honey bees (Apis mellifera) and other pollinating insects continue to decline in Europe and North America. Honey bees face many challenges, including an issue generally affecting wildlife: landscape changes have reduced flower-rich areas. One way to help is therefore to supplement with flowers, but when would this be most beneficial? We use the waggle dance, a unique behaviour in which a successful forager communicates to nestmates the location of visited flowers, to make a 2-year survey of food availability. We "eavesdropped" on 5097 dances to track seasonal changes in foraging, as indicated by the distance to which the bees as economic foragers will recruit, over a representative rural-urban landscape. In year 3, we determined nectar sugar concentration. We found that mean foraging distance/area significantly increase from springs (493 m, 0.8 km2) to summers (2156 m, 15.2 km2), even though nectar is not better quality, before decreasing in autumns (1275 m, 5.1 km2). As bees will not forage at long distances unnecessarily, this suggests summer is the most challenging season, with bees utilizing an area 22 and 6 times greater than spring or autumn. Our study demonstrates that dancing bees as indicators can provide information relevant to helping them, and, in particular, can show the months when additional forage would be most valuable.
format	article
author	Margaret J Couvillon Roger Schürch Francis L W Ratnieks
author_facet	Margaret J Couvillon Roger Schürch Francis L W Ratnieks
author_sort	Margaret J Couvillon
title	Waggle dance distances as integrative indicators of seasonal foraging challenges.
title_short	Waggle dance distances as integrative indicators of seasonal foraging challenges.
title_full	Waggle dance distances as integrative indicators of seasonal foraging challenges.
title_fullStr	Waggle dance distances as integrative indicators of seasonal foraging challenges.
title_full_unstemmed	Waggle dance distances as integrative indicators of seasonal foraging challenges.
title_sort	waggle dance distances as integrative indicators of seasonal foraging challenges.
publisher	Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate	2014
url	https://doaj.org/article/375d32ea9e284316b5a09f269a7fd957
work_keys_str_mv	AT margaretjcouvillon waggledancedistancesasintegrativeindicatorsofseasonalforagingchallenges AT rogerschurch waggledancedistancesasintegrativeindicatorsofseasonalforagingchallenges AT francislwratnieks waggledancedistancesasintegrativeindicatorsofseasonalforagingchallenges
_version_	1718421794921119744

Waggle dance distances as integrative indicators of seasonal foraging challenges.

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