ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Nectar vs. pollen loading affects the tradeoff between flight stability and maneuverability in bumblebees.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 44 citations in OpenAlex.
- Fixed Thoracic Lead Tags Are Associated with Distinct Landing-Approach Trajectories in Honey Bees (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Landscape-Wide Metabarcoding Shows Interactions Among the Gut Microbiome and Pollen Diversity in the Invasive Bumblebee,Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting from the Thorax Vibration of Freely Flying Bees.Cyborg and bionic systems (Washington, D.C.) · 2025Article
- Electrostatic pollination by butterflies and moths.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Bumblebees compensate for the adverse effects of sidewind during visually guided landings.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- We know very little about pollination in theEcology and evolution · 2024Review
- Flies adaptively control flight to compensate for added inertia.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Sensory fusion in the hoverfly righting reflex.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Article
- An Aerial-Wall Robotic Insect That Can Land, Climb, and Take Off from Vertical Surfaces.Research (Washington, D.C.) · 2023Article
- Flight-Fecundity Trade-offs: A Possible Mechanistic Link in Plant-Herbivore-Pollinator Systems.Frontiers in plant science · 2022Article
- Wing Coupling in Bees and Wasps: From the Underlying Science to Bioinspired Engineering.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2021Article
- Wind drives temporal variation in pollinator visitation in a fragmented tropical forest.Biology letters · 2020Article
- Bumblebees minimize control challenges by combining active and passive modes in unsteady winds.Scientific reports · 2016Article
- Advantage of straight walk instability in turning maneuver of multilegged locomotion: a robotics approach.Scientific reports · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Bumblebee foragers spend a significant portion of their lives transporting nectar and pollen, often carrying loads equivalent to more than half their body mass. Whereas nectar is stored in the abdomen near the bee's center of mass, pollen is carried on the hind legs, farther from the center of mass. We examine how load position changes the rotational moment of inertia in bumblebees and whether this affects their flight maneuverability and/or stability. We applied simulated pollen or nectar loads of equal mass to Bombus impatiens bumblebees and examined flight performance in a wind tunnel under three conditions: flight in unsteady flow, tracking an oscillating flower in smooth flow, and flower tracking in unsteady flow. Using an inertial model, we estimated that carrying a load on the legs rather than in the abdomen increases a bee's moment of inertia about the roll and yaw axes but not the pitch axis. Consistent with these predictions, we found that bees carrying a load on their legs displayed slower rotations about their roll and yaw axes, regardless of whether these rotations were driven by external perturbations or self-initiated steering maneuvers. This allowed pollen-loaded bees to maintain a more stable body orientation and higher median flight speed in unsteady flow but reduced their performance when tracking a moving flower, supporting the concept of a tradeoff between stability and maneuverability. These results demonstrate that the types of resources collected by bees affect their flight performance and energetics and suggest that wind conditions may influence resource selection.
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