ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
Flowering plant composition shapes pathogen infection intensity and reproduction in bumble bee colonies.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Can floral nectars reduce transmission of Leishmania?PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2022Pooled it
- Fungicide consumption exacerbates the negative effects of a common gut parasite in bumble bee microcolonies.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Tracking Existing Factors Directly Affecting the Reproduction of Bumblebees: Current Knowledge.Insects · 2024Review
- Distribution of infectious and parasitic agents among three sentinel bee species across European agricultural landscapes.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Sunflower plantings reduce a common gut pathogen and increase queen production in common eastern bumblebee colonies.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Manipulation of multiple floral traits demonstrates role in pollinator disease transmission.Ecology · 2023Article
- Endosymbionts that threaten commercially raised and wild bumble bees (Journal of pollination ecology · 2023Article
- Increasing flower species richness in agricultural landscapes alters insect pollinator networks: Implications for bee health and competition.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Towards a system-level causative knowledge of pollinator communities.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Consuming sunflower pollen reduced pathogen infection but did not alter measures of immunity in bumblebees.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Understanding effects of floral products on bee parasites: Mechanisms, synergism, and ecological complexity.International journal for parasitology. Parasites and wildlife · 2022Article
- Functional traits linked to pathogen prevalence in wild bee communities.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Floral traits affecting the transmission of beneficial and pathogenic pollinator-associated microbes.Current opinion in insect science · 2021Review
- Virus Prevalence and Genetic Diversity Across a Wild Bumblebee Community.Frontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- Flowering plant composition shapes pathogen infection intensity and reproduction in bumble bee colonies.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Pathogens pose significant threats to pollinator health and food security. Pollinators can transmit diseases during foraging, but the consequences of plant species composition for infection is unknown. In agroecosystems, flowering strips or hedgerows are often used to augment pollinator habitat. We used canola as a focal crop in tents and manipulated flowering strip composition using plant species we had previously shown to result in higher or lower bee infection in short-term trials. We also manipulated initial colony infection to assess impacts on foraging behavior. Flowering strips using high-infection plant species nearly doubled bumble bee colony infection intensity compared to low-infection plant species, with intermediate infection in canola-only tents. Both infection treatment and flowering strips reduced visits to canola, but we saw no evidence that infection treatment shifted foraging preferences. Although high-infection flowering strips increased colony infection intensity, colony reproduction was improved with any flowering strips compared to canola alone. Effects of flowering strips on colony reproduction were explained by nectar availability, but effects of flowering strips on infection intensity were not. Thus, flowering strips benefited colony reproduction by adding floral resources, but certain plant species also come with a risk of increased pathogen infection intensity.
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