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Q&A ViewAttendees 6

Plant-Insect Ecosystems

10-Minute Paper

P-IE: Pollinators 2

The effects of competition on individual foraging patterns and within nest behavior across bumble bee colonies

Tuesday, November 2, 2021
10:00 AM - 10:12 AM MT
Location: Colorado Convention Center, Meeting Room 103-105
In-Person
Within bumblebee colonies, inter-colony competition for floral resources can be a significant ecological stressor leading to a negative impact on fitness. The link between an individual bee’s competitive interaction while foraging and individual behavior in the nest remains unknown, largely due to the technical challenges of long term individual tracking across multiple settings. Using such a framework we can begin to answer what axes of behavior (across individual and collective scales) are modified in response to competition, and across what timescales. Here we present our work towards a better understanding of the effects of foraging competition on individual behavior, plant-pollinator interactions, and collective colony responses.  In the following study we use hoop houses as contained foraging chambers in which we placed custom bee boxes outfitted with overhead cameras for continuous behavior tracking and tagged bees for maintaining individual identity across long time scales and settings. The 5x30m foraging chamber contains ~180 potted plants of 6 different species, 90 which have cameras continuously monitoring flowers to track individual foraging behavior and flower interactions. The experiment begins with a single colony allowed to freely forage within the hoop house, after 3 days of baseline activity, a new colony will be introduced to the space for another 4 days. Through comparing individual foraging patterns and within nest behavior before and during competition we hope to better understand the behavior responses across different settings, timescales, and individuals and collectively.