ArticleScientific reports2020
Pollen defenses negatively impact foraging and fitness in a generalist bee (Bombus impatiens: Apidae).
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 65 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sunflower Pollen and Bumble Bee Health: Mechanisms, Modifiers and Trade-Offs.Ecology and evolution · 2026Review
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- Impact of Domestication on Floral Traits and Rewards: A Comparison Between Wild and Domesticated Squash (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- High toxin concentration in pollen may deter collection by bees in butterfly-pollinated Rhododendron molle.Annals of botany · 2024Article
- Article
- Elevated rates of dietary generalization in eusocial lineages of the secondarily herbivorous bees.BMC ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Implementing IPM in crop management simultaneously improves the health of managed bees and enhances the diversity of wild pollinator communities.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Pollinator nutrition and its role in merging the dual objectives of pollinator health and optimal crop production.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Mutualism has its limits: consequences of asymmetric interactions between a well-defended plant and its herbivorous pollinator.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Exosymbiotic microbes within fermented pollen provisions are as important for the development of solitary bees as the pollen itself.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Understanding effects of floral products on bee parasites: Mechanisms, synergism, and ecological complexity.International journal for parasitology. Parasites and wildlife · 2022Article
- Poison or Potion: Effects of Sunflower Phenolamides on Bumble Bees and Their Gut Parasite.Biology · 2022Article
- The pest control and pollinator protection dilemma: The case of thiamethoxam prophylactic applications in squash crops.PloS one · 2022Article
- IPM reduces insecticide applications by 95% while maintaining or enhancing crop yields through wild pollinator conservation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Bumblebee resilience to climate change, through plastic and adaptive responses.Global change biology · 2021Review
- Supplemental forage ameliorates the negative impact of insecticides on bumblebees in a pollinator-dependent crop.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Exposure to low doses of pesticides induces an immune response and the production of nitric oxide in honeybees.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Plants may benefit from limiting the community of generalist floral visitors if the species that remain are more effective pollinators and less effective pollenivores. Plants can reduce access to pollen through altered floral cues or morphological structures, but can also reduce consumption through direct pollen defenses. We observed that Eucera (Peponapis) pruinosa, a specialist bee on Cucurbita plants, collected pure loads of pollen while generalist honey bees and bumble bees collected negligible amounts of cucurbit pollen, even though all groups of bees visited these flowers. Cucurbit flowers have no morphological adaptations to limit pollen collection by bees, thus we assessed their potential for physical, nutritional, and chemical pollen traits that might act as defenses to limit pollen loss to generalist pollinators. Bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) microcolonies experienced reduced pollen consumption, mortality, and reproduction as well as increased stress responses when exposed to nutritional and mechanical pollen defenses. These bees also experienced physiological effects of these defenses in the form of hindgut expansion and gut melanization. Chemical defenses alone increased the area of gut melanization in larger bees and induced possible compensatory feeding. Together, these results suggest that generalist bumble bees avoid collecting cucurbit pollen due to the physiological costs of physical and chemical pollen defenses.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.