ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Macronutrient ratios in pollen shape bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) foraging strategies and floral preferences.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 140 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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140 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 350 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Pollination Under Pressure: Grazing and Nutrient Enrichment Reshape Arctic Pollinator Communities and Interaction Networks.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Bee Visitation to Three Clover Species (Insects · 2026Article
- Wild bees occupy temporally stable pollen nutritional niches.Oecologia · 2026Article
- Soil salinity effects on pollen and pollinator visitation in a buzz-pollinated glycophyte, Solanum carolinense.American journal of botany · 2026Article
- From Pollen to Pathogen Defense: How Pollen Chemical Quality Impacts Deformed Wing Virus Infection and Survival in Honey Bees.Viruses · 2026Review
- Sunflower Pollen and Bumble Bee Health: Mechanisms, Modifiers and Trade-Offs.Ecology and evolution · 2026Review
- Plant origin and irrigation influence floral resource value and pollinator attraction to ornamental plants.PeerJ · 2026Article
- Substantial variation in larval honey bee nutrition within and among Apis mellifera colonies.PloS one · 2026Article
- Complex effects of climatic variation on bumblebee queen fitness.The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- Disentangling the influence of environmental conditions on sex determination in haplodiploid organisms.The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- Temperature influences pollinators' choice of floral partners independently of community composition.The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- Botanical origin, chemical composition, and microbiological quality of bee pollen from Iran.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Risk-averse parenting: bumble bees prioritize metal avoidance over sugar intake to safeguard offspring.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Impact of Domestication on Floral Traits and Rewards: A Comparison Between Wild and Domesticated Squash (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Environmental cues rather than quality of supplemented pollen drive the foraging behaviour of honey bees during avocado pollination.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Can the nutritional geometric framework unveil how macronutrients in pollen shape solitary bee foraging and survival?Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Nutrient niche dynamics among wild pollinators.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Local floral resources and edge density within the urban ecosystem promote larger and less variable body size in the great banded furrow bee, Halictus scabiosae.BMC ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Article
80 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
To fuel their activities and rear their offspring, foraging bees must obtain a sufficient quality and quantity of nutritional resources from a diverse plant community. Pollen is the primary source of proteins and lipids for bees, and the concentrations of these nutrients in pollen can vary widely among host-plant species. Therefore we hypothesized that foraging decisions of bumble bees are driven by both the protein and lipid content of pollen. By successively reducing environmental and floral cues, we analyzed pollen-foraging preferences of Bombus impatiens in (i) host-plant species, (ii) pollen isolated from these host-plant species, and (iii) nutritionally modified single-source pollen diets encompassing a range of protein and lipid concentrations. In our semifield experiments, B impatiens foragers exponentially increased their foraging rates of pollen from plant species with high protein:lipid (P:L) ratios; the most preferred plant species had the highest ratio (∼4.6:1). These preferences were confirmed in cage studies where, in pairwise comparisons in the absence of other floral cues, B impatiens workers still preferred pollen with higher P:L ratios. Finally, when presented with nutritionally modified pollen, workers were most attracted to pollen with P:L ratios of 5:1 and 10:1, but increasing the protein or lipid concentration (while leaving ratios intact) reduced attraction. Thus, macronutritional ratios appear to be a primary factor driving bee pollen-foraging behavior and may explain observed patterns of host-plant visitation across the landscape. The nutritional quality of pollen resources should be taken into consideration when designing conservation habitats supporting bee populations.
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