Foraging ranges of solitary bees

By A. Gathmann, T. Tscharntke. 2002

1,119 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary 1 Habitat requirements of solitary bees include nesting sites, food resources and nesting material. We used translocation experiments to establish foraging distances and measured foraging trip duration to analyse how solitary bees cope with the distance between nesting sites and suitable food plants in different habitat types. 2 Maximum foraging distance between nesting site and food patch was 150–600 m for the 16 bee species examined. Foraging distance was correlated positively with body length. Mean foraging trip duration, measured for seven bee species, ranged from 6 to 28 min and was also correlated with body length. In a study of the polylectic species Osmia rufa , we found a significant decrease in foraging trip duration with increasing number of plant species. Logistic regressions showed that the oligolectic Megachile lapponica nested in trap nests with a probability of 50% if the distance between trap nest and food patch was less than 250 m. The oligolectic Chelostoma rapunculi utilized trap nests when the distance to the nearest food patch was less than 300 m. 3 These experiments showed that solitary bees have a rather small foraging range so local habitat structure appears to be of more importance than large-scale landscape structure. All requirements for sustaining viable populations must be within this range. Therefore, it is necessary to maintain and restore a dense network of habitat patches in landscapes to ensure long-term sustainability of wild bee diversity and their ecological function as pollinators.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/043a95c83ea3e7f2f6507871ab6ef2c4c122b980

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Citations in the corpus

Collateral effects of beekeeping: Impacts on pollen-nectar resources and wild bee communities (2016, background): “If so, large bees may be forced to nest 387 somewhere else or widen their foraging ranges, which are well known to be positively related to 388 body size (Gathmann & Tscharntke, 2002; Greenleaf, Williams, Winfree, & Kremen, 2007; 389 Guédot, Bosch, & Kemp, 2009).”
Factors affecting bee communities in forest openings and adjacent mature forest (2017, background): “The lack of a statistically significant effect of distance to opening along transects might be explained by the fact that the furthest sample point was only 50 m from openings, which is likely well below the foraging distance of most bees (Gathmann and Tscharntke, 2002).”
Landscapes with wild bee habitats enhance pollination, fruit set and yield of sweet cherry (2012, positive): “The 1 km radius was chosen, because solitary bees, which comprise most of the recorded bee species, are known to be influenced by landscape factors at small spatial scales up to 1 km (Gathmann and Tscharntke, 2002; Steffan-Dewenter et al., 2002).”
Relationships between wild bees, hoverflies and pollination success in apple orchards with different landscape contexts (2016, background): “Gathmann and Tscharntke (2002) found the maximum foraging range of solitary bees to be within 150 and 600 m, whereas, according to Jauker et al. (2013), a radius of 250 m around the center of the calcareous grasslands was the best scale predicting bee species richness.”
Pollinator dispersal in an agricultural matrix: opposing responses of wild bees and hoverflies to landscape structure and distance from main habitat (2009, background): “In contrast, a heterogeneous mosaic of land-use types including a sufficient cover of grassland habitats of well over 10% within a 250 m radius, approximately the foraging distance of small bees ( Gathmann and Tscharntke 2002 ), supports species’ dispersal and cannot be considered a hostile matrix.”
Foraging trip duration and density of megachilid bees, eumenid wasps and pompilid wasps in tropical agroforestry systems (2004, background): “The foraging trip distance can be measured indirectly with the foraging trip duration, to draw conclusions on the quality of the bees’ and wasps’ habitat (Gathmann & Tscharntke 2002; Strohm et al .”
Ecological and life-history traits predict bee species responses to environmental disturbances (2010, background): “Body size is correlated with foraging flight distance (Gathmann and Tscharntke, 2002; Greenleaf et al., 2007) and so would be expected to strongly influence the scale over which bees can access resources and their ability to recolonize disturbed sites.”
Solidago canadensis impacts on native plant and pollinator communities in different-aged old fields (2015, background): “Invasive plants are reported to influence the abundance and diversity of smaller, mostly solitary wild bees (Apoidea) of limited dispersal ability (Gathmann & Tscharntke 2002), as well as hoverflies (Syrphidae) and bumblebees, which generally have larger foraging ranges (Greenleaf, Williams,…”
Intensification of agriculture, landscape composition and wild bee communities: a large scale study in four European countries. (2010, background): “Secondly, larger species like bumblebees are assumed to have better flight abilities and longer foraging distances than solitary bees (Gathmann and Tscharntke, 2002; Greenleaf et al., 2007).”
Conserving Pollinators in North American Forests: A Review (2016, background): “Since nonnative plants frequently occur along roadways, roads can act as conduits for their spread (Greenberg et al. 1997; Gucinski et al. 2001) and invasion into neighboring habitats (Gelbard and Belnap 2003; Christen and Matlack 2009; Birdsall et al. 2012).”
Wild pollinator communities are negatively affected by invasion of alien goldenrods in grassland landscapes (2009, background): “Because the areas of the sites were large enough to prevent the capture of pollinators from adjacent patches (e.g. Bink, 1992; Gathmann and Tscharntke, 2002), we consider it as a reasonable assumption that pollinators occupying invaded and non-invaded sites are representative for those sites.”
Do sown flower strips boost wild pollinator abundance and pollination services in a spring-flowering crop? A case study from UK cider apple orchards (2017, background): “This distance was considered greater than the 131 average foraging range of most solitary and eusocial bee species found in the study 132 region (Gathmann and Tscharntke 2002; Zurbuchen et al. 2010).”