Female
and male bees of the same species frequent different flowers, study finds
Date: April 24, 2019
Source: Rutgers University
For
scores of wild bee species, females and males visit very different flowers for
food -- a discovery that could be important for conservation efforts, according
to Rutgers-led research.
Indeed,
the diets of female and male bees of the same species could be as different as
the diets of different bee species, according to a study in the
journal PLOS ONE.
"As
we get a better sense of what makes flowers attractive to different kinds of
bees, maybe we can get smarter about bee conservation," said lead author
Michael Roswell, a doctoral student in the lab of senior author Rachael
Winfree, a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural
Resources at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
Five
years ago, when Winfree Lab members were evaluating federally funded programs
to create habitat for pollinators, Roswell noticed that some flowers were very
popular with male bees and others with females. That spurred a study to test,
for as many wild bee species as possible, whether males and females visit
different kinds of flowers.
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