With flower preferences, bees have a big gap between the sexes

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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Clever bees can identify different flowers by patterns of scent

Date:  June 12, 2018

Source:  University of Bristol

New research led by scientists from the University of Bristol and Queen Mary University of London has revealed that bumblebees can tell flowers apart by patterns of scent.

Flowers have lots of different patterns on their surfaces that help to guide bees and other pollinators towards the flower's nectar, speeding up pollination.

These patterns include visual signals like lines pointing to the centre of the flower, or colour differences.

Flowers are also known to have different patterns of scent across their surface, and so a visiting bee might find that the centre of the flower smells differently to the edge of the petals.

This new research, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows that bumblebees can tell flowers apart by how scent is arranged on their surface.

Lead author Dr Dave Lawson, from the University of Bristol's School of Biological Sciences, said: "If you look at a flower with a microscope, you can often see that the cells that produce the flower's scent are arranged in patterns.

"By creating artificial flowers that have identical scents arranged in different patterns, we are able to show that this patterning might be a signal to a bee. For a flower, it's not just smelling nice that's important, but also where you put the scent in the first place."

The study also shows that once bees had learnt how a pattern of scent was arranged on a flower, they then preferred to visit unscented flowers that had a similar arrangement of visual spots on their surface.

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Bees use invisible heat patterns to choose flowers

December 19, 2017, University of Bristol

A new study, led by scientists from the University of Bristol, has found that a wide range of flowers produce not just signals that we can see and smell, but also ones that are invisible such as heat.

In the hidden world of flower-pollinator interactions, heat can act not only as life-sustaining warmth, but can also be part of the rich variety of sensory signposts that flowers use to provide advertisement and information for their insect pollinators.

The majority of flowers examined, including many common in gardens, such as poppies and daisies, had complex patterns of heat across their petals, echoing the colourful patterns that we see with our own eyes.

On average these patterns were 4-5°C warmer than the rest of the flower, although the patterns could be as much as 11°C warmer.

The Bristol Scientists made artificial flowers that copied these heat patterns, but did not include the corresponding colour patterns.

While these artificial flowers look identical to human eyes, and we are not able to tell them apart, it is a different case for foraging bumblebees.

Bumblebees, who visit a wide range of different flowers, were found to be able to use these patterns to distinguish between different flowers and the rewards that they provide.

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Radar tracking reveals how bees develop a route between flowers

Date:  December 11, 2017

Source:  Queen Mary University of London

Summary:

As bees gain foraging experience they continually refine both the order in which they visit flowers and the flight paths they take between flowers to generate better and better routes, according to researchers at Queen Mary University of London.

Despite this, bees can be tricked into taking tempting shortcuts between flowers even at the cost of increasing the overall distance they have to fly.

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Flower attracts insects by pretending to be a mushroom

Date:  November 15, 2017

Source:  Kobe University

The mysterious flowers of Aspidistra elatior are found on the southern Japanese island of Kuroshima. Until recently, scientists thought that A. elatior has the most unusual pollination ecology among all flowering plants, being pollinated by slugs and amphipods. However, direct observation of their ecosystem has revealed that they are mainly pollinated by fungus gnats, probably thanks to their resemblance to mushrooms.

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Flower petals have ‘blue halos’ to attract bees

By Virginia MorellOct. 18, 2017 , 1:00 PM

Many wild bees prefer flowers in the violet-blue range—in part because these blossoms tend to produce high volumes of nectar. But it’s not easy for plants to produce blue flowers. Instead, a new study shows that many have evolved “blue halos” to allure bees, nanoscale structures on their petals that produce a blue glow when light hits them. The blue halo is created by tiny, irregular striations—usually lined up in parallel fashion—and is found in all major groups of flowering plants pollinated by insects, the scientists report today in Nature. They made their find by using scanning electron microscopy to examine every type of angiosperm—or flowering plant—including grasses, herbaceous plants, shrubs, and trees. 

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Fungus creates zombie beetles that crave flowers before death

9 June 2017

Zoologger is our weekly column highlighting extraordinary animals – and occasionally other organisms – from around the world.

By Richa Malhotra

Species: Goldenrod soldier beetles (Chauliognathus pensylvanicus)
Habitat: Meadows and fields in North America

Dying on a bed of flowers might seem like a good way to go. Except it’s not when you’re a beetle suffering a gruesome fungal infection.

Goldenrod soldier beetles (Chauliognathus pensylvanicus) feed and mate on flowers – and that’s where some of them meet their end, too. When infected with the fungus Eryniopsis lampyridarum, the beetles clamp their jaws onto a flower and die soon after.

Hours later and still stuck to the flowers, the dead beetles’ wings snap open as though ready to fly. With their wings raised, these beetles even attract mates – live males were seen having sex with zombie females.

“This would be like a person infected with a virus, who deliberately sought out a singles bar, grabbed hold of the bar with their teeth, and died there, where healthy humans would be exposed to infective virus particles,” says Donald Steinkraus at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

He thinks this greatly increases the chance that the fungal infection will be picked up by healthy beetles. It attaches the infected beetles exactly where other healthy beetles are feeding and looking for mates.

Dramatic pose

Steinkraus and his team studied 446 live and dead solider beetles for signs of fungal infection. About 20 per cent of these were found to carry the fungus, with most of these assuming the same dramatic posture. They clung tightly to flowers using only their mandibles and their legs hung free.

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Flowers tone down the iridescence of their petals and avoid confusing bees

Date: February 25, 2016

Source: University of Cambridge

Iridescent flowers are never as dramatically rainbow-coloured as iridescent beetles, birds or fish, but their petals produce the perfect signal for bees, according to a new study published today in Current Biology.

Bees buzzing around a garden, looking for nectar, need to be able to spot flower petals and recognise which coloured flowers are full of food for them. Professor Beverley Glover from the University of Cambridge's Department of Plant Sciences and Dr Heather Whitney from the University of Bristol found that iridescence -- the shiny, colour-shifting effect seen on soap bubbles -- makes flower petals more obvious to bees, but that too much iridescence confuses bees' ability to distinguish colours.

Whitney, Glover and their colleagues found that flowers use more subtle, or imperfect, iridescence on their petals, which doesn't interfere with the bees' ability to distinguish subtly different colours, such as different shades of purple. Perfect iridescence, for example as found on the back of a CD, would make it more difficult for bees to distinguish between subtle colour variations and cause them to make mistakes in their flower choices.

"In 2009 we showed that some flowers can be iridescent and that bees can see that iridescence, but since then we have wondered why floral iridescence is so much less striking than other examples of iridescence in nature," says Glover. "We have now discovered that floral iridescence is a trade-off that makes flower detection by bumblebees easier, but won't interfere with their ability to recognise different colours."

Read on ...

Flowers can endanger bees

Entomologists show flowers serve as parasite-dispersing hubs

Date:

August 4, 2015

Source:

University of California - Riverside

Summary:

Flowers can pose a grave danger to bees, a team of researchers has determined. The study is the first to show that not only can bees disperse parasites around the environment but also that flowers are platforms for a host of pollinator parasites subsequently dispersed onto visiting bees. The finding may affect the national and international trade of flowers unless sterilization of parasites on these flowers can be guaranteed.

read on...

Bumblebees Able To Spot Which Flowers Offer Best Rewards

August 1, 2014

Unlike nectar, bees do not ingest pollen whilst foraging on flowers, and so until now it has been unclear whether they are able to form associative relationships between what a flower looks like and the quality of its pollen.

The study used bumblebee foragers housed under controlled conditions to test whether they do learn about flowers during pollen collection.

Their results show that bumblebees can individually assess pollen samples and discriminate between them during collection, quickly forming preferences for a particular type of pollen.

The findings, published today in the Journal of Experimental Biology, indicate that pollen foraging behavior involves learning and individual decision-making, which may allow bees to quickly learn which flowers provide the most nutritious pollen rewards for rearing their young.

Dr Natalie Hempel de Ibarra, Senior Lecturer in Neuroethology at the University of Exeter, said: “There is still very little known about how bees decide which flowers to visit for pollen collection. Easily learning floral features based on pollen rewards, without needing any nectar rewards, is a fast and effective way to recognise those flower species which bees have previously experienced to be the best ones.”

Dr Elizabeth Nicholls, a former PhD student at The University of Exeter and now a Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Sussex, said: “Bees need to be able to select flowers providing the most nutritious food for rearing their young. Since bumblebees don’t eat pollen when foraging, it was unclear if or how they might be able to assess differences in quality. Here we’ve shown that they are able to detect differences in pollen, even before landing, which means they may be able to tell, just from the colour of the petals, which flowers are worth visiting.

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Odours can keep insects from finding flowers

By Zoe GoughReporter, BBC Nature

Insects find locating their favourite flowers more difficult when pollution and other odours get in the way, new research has shown.

Tobacco hornworm moths feed on the nectar of plants which can grow hundreds of metres apart.

Researchers found the moths tracked the flower's scent better in clean air, when other smells were not present.

They discovered the other odours changed how the moth's brain processed the plant's scent.

The findings are reported in the journal Science.

Adult tobacco hornworm moths, Manduca sexta, have wingspans of 4in (10cm) and can travel up to 80 miles (129km) in an evening, looking for food and mates.

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Flowers' polarization patterns help bees find food

Date:

June 5, 2014

Source:

University of Bristol

Summary:

Bees use their ability to 'see' polarized light when foraging for food, researchers have discovered. This is the first time bees have been found to use this ability for something other than navigation.

Read on

Surprisingly Simple Logic Explains Amazing Bee Abilities

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer

Date: 04 April 2013 Time: 12:00 PM ET

Bumblebees and Pavlov's dogs have something in common: Both can learn to associate two things they've never seen together before.

A new study finds that bees use simple logical steps to learn from other bees which flowers hold the sweetest nectar.

"It really gives us an insight into how complex social-learning behaviors can arise in animals," said study researcher Erika Dawson, a doctoral student at Queen Mary University of London.

Scientists have long observed that bees copy other bees when learning the best spots to forage. Just by watching another bee forage through a screen, a bumblebee could go on to pick the sweetest flowers on its own, Dawson said.

"It was such a complex behavior for a little bee to perform, and that's why we thought there might be something a lot more simple behind what we were seeing," she said.

Continued:  http://www.livescience.com/28434-simple-logic-bee-learning.html

Bumblebees sense flowers' electric fields

By Ben Aviss, Reporter, BBC Nature

Bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) can detect flowers' electric fields, scientists have discovered.

Results indicate floral electric fields improve the bees' ability to discriminate between different flowers.

When used with visual signals, electrical cues can enhance the bee's memory of floral rewards.

Researchers suggest this method of signalling provides rapid and dynamic communication between plants and pollinators.

The findings are published in the online journal Science Express.

Flowering plants reward pollinators with nectar and pollen in return for their assistance in the flowers' sexual reproduction.

Flowers attract pollinators using cues such as bright colours, patterns and enticing fragrances but this study suggests the importance of electrostatic information as an additional cue for the first time.

"Of course it has existed for a long time but this is a new way we can look at the interactions between bees and flowers," said Prof Daniel Robert of the University of Bristol.

Continued:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/21508035

Masked, bushy-tailed cemetery flower bandit nabbed

For weeks, a bandit would pull flowers out of vases at Grand Forks' Memorial Park Cemetery, leaving behind no traces to help solve the mystery.

But the perpetrator has been nabbed. Turns out, it's a raccoon.

Robin Purcell, the Grand Forks Cemetery Association administrator, told the Grand Forks Herald (http://bit.ly/MiVjYu) that he apprehended the beady-eyed, bushy-tailed culprit Friday morning in a trap. He used cat food for bait.

The vandalism spree began two weeks before Memorial Day, making the situation more frustrating for Purcell and his staff as they prepared for the holiday. Every day for nearly a month, Purcell would arrive at Memorial Park to find flowers pulled out and set next to the vases.

"At first, we thought it was just a random occurrence," he said. "But then it happened the next day and continued for weeks."

Purcell and his staff first thought they were dealing with a human vandal.

"Normally, when people remove the flowers, they'll throw them away from the grave or just steal them," he said. "But these flowers were being laid next to the vases."

Purcell eventually suspected it was a critter, and moths and grubs found in the vases confirmed the suspicion.

He borrowed a trap from the game warden's office, but it turned up empty the following morning. A check of the trap Thursday morning produced no raccoon, either.

"He ate all the cat food we had in front of the trap but he didn't go into it," Purcell said.

But Purcell arrived Friday morning to find a metal box contained one wet, mud-covered raccoon.

Purcell suspects the accused may be part of a family, leaving the possibility that he has a few more suspects to catch before the flowers are safe again.

The bandit was sentenced to life in the countryside.

http://www.thedickinsonpress.com/event/apArticle/id/D9V98IEG0/