Trapped: Assessing Attractiveness of Potential Food Sources to Bumblebees

Unrewarding artificial flowers that trapped approaching bumblebees were used here for the first time to assess the effects of several floral characteristics on floral attractiveness to bumblebees that never obtained food from flowers. Floral size and floral scent had no discernable effect. In a comp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of insect behavior 2011-03, Vol.24 (2), p.144-158
Main Authors: Hudon, T. M, Plowright, C. M. S
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agriculture
Animal behavior
Animal Ecology
Animal ethology
Attraction
Bees
Behavioral Sciences
Biological and medical sciences
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Bombus
Comparative studies
Entomology
Evolutionary Biology
floral choice
Flowers
Flowers & plants
Food
Food supply
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
innate
Life Sciences
Neurobiology
olfactory learning
Protozoa. Invertebrata
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
sign stimulus
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Summary:Unrewarding artificial flowers that trapped approaching bumblebees were used here for the first time to assess the effects of several floral characteristics on floral attractiveness to bumblebees that never obtained food from flowers. Floral size and floral scent had no discernable effect. In a comparison between two colors (white and blue) and two shapes (radial and square), choice proportions for blue radial flowers were significantly greater than chance. Our proposed method is an alternative to prior training, with food associated either with visual or olfactory stimuli, which is unnecessary to obtain floral preferences by free-flying bumblebees exploring potential food sources.
ISSN:0892-7553
1572-8889
DOI:10.1007/s10905-010-9243-7