Why eat nasty things? Because
your enemy finds it even nastier
Date: June 14, 2016
Source: University of Chicago
Press Journals
Plant pollens vary in quality as
food sources for bees, and pollen from the sunflower family (the family that
includes dandelions, daisies, and thistles) is known to have some unpleasant
qualities. Bees fed exclusively sunflower pollen often develop poorly, slowly,
or not at all. Yet many bee species collect pollen exclusively from this
family; in fact, specialization on sunflower pollen has evolved multiple times
in bees. Research by Dakota Spear and colleagues suggests that parasites could
be part of the explanation.
Sarah Silverman, at the time a
McGill University undergraduate doing summer research on solitary mason bees at
the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL) in Colorado, USA (with
University of Ottawa professor Jessica Forrest), noticed that bee species
specializing on sunflower pollen were not attacked by a common brood-parasitic
wasp, Sapyga. The wasp frequently lays eggs in the nests of other mason
bee species, where its larvae kill bee eggs and eat their pollen provisions.
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