Bumble Bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Diversity and Abundance in Tallgrass Prairie Patches: Effects of Local and Landscape Floral Resources

By H. Hines, S. D. Hendrix. 2005

163 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Conservation of biodiversity recently has focused on the importance of pollinator services for the preservation of threatened plant species in fragmented landscapes such as the tallgrass prairie biome. In this study, we assessed the influence of local and landscape floral resource diversity and abundance on bumble bee (Bombus Latreille) diversity and abundance at eight tallgrass prairie sites in Iowa. We calculated a landscape floral resource index (LRI) for areas within 500- and 700-m radii of each site based on the density and diversity of flowering plant species in polygons of different landscape elements. LRI values, areas of each landscape habitat type, and the diversity and abundance of bumble bee–used flowering ramets at each site were compared with bumble bee diversity and abundance at the site. Bumble bee diversity was best predicted by a model including the LRI of grasslands surrounding sites at 500 m, which explained most of the variance, and the abundance of bumble bee–visited plants at the site. Bumble bee abundance was best predicted by a model including the percent of the landscape in grasslands at the 700-m radius, which explained most of the variance, and the abundance of bumble bee–visited plants at the site. Our results reveal that bumble bee diversity at tallgrass prairie patches is influenced by the availability of resources in the landscape, particularly in grasslands, and to a lesser extent by site characteristics, indicating the importance of spatial scale for creating successful pollinator management plans in fragmented landscapes.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Insect Science, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e05756b837edfaef296d5b7cbee435edce245512

How researchers see this paper

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In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

1. R. Isaacs
2. S. Cameron
3. S. Leonhardt
4. Ya Tang
5. N. Blüthgen
6. Jianwu Yao
7. J. Ascher
8. K. Goodell

In Insect Science

1. R. Isaacs
2. S. Cameron
3. Ya Tang
4. Jianwu Yao
5. J. Ascher
6. Julianna K. Tuell
7. D. Landis
8. N. Blüthgen

In Plant Science

1. R. Isaacs
2. K. Goodell
3. S. Cameron
4. Ya Tang
5. Hisatomo Taki
6. D. Landis
7. J. Ascher
8. N. Blüthgen

Citations in the corpus

• Relationships between the density and diversity of floral resources and flower visitor activity in a temperate grassland community (2006, background): “…species, probably due to the minimised foraging costs of pollinators (e.g. Goulson, 2003 ), but most studies of bumblebee activity at the landscape scale have studied the importance of floral resources at ranges larger than a 500-m radius (e.g. Westphal et al. , 2003; Hines & Hendrix, 2005 ).”
• The bumblebees of Sichuan (Hymenoptera: Apidae, Bombini) (2009, background): “…and in geographical range extent, and that this has often been driven in large part by land-use changes (e.g. Williams, 1986; Rasmont & Mersch, 1988; Berezin et al., 1996; Yang, 1999; Hines & Hendrix, 2005; Benton, 2006; Carvell et al., 2006; Fitzpatrick et al., 2007; Kosior et al., 2007).”
• Implications of Three Biofuel Crops for Beneficial Arthropods in Agricultural Landscapes (2010, result): “Bee diversity and abundance have been linked previously to the floral resources present in landscapes [16, 28, 43, 51], and our finding of more abundant bee communities in prairie and switchgrass sites compared with corn supports some of these earlier findings.”
• The same, but different: pollen foraging in honeybee and bumblebee colonies (2011, background): “Among these, changes/reductions in habitat and resource availability and diversity are considered one (albeit not the only) cause of the observed bee decline (Williams 1986; Steffan-Dewenter and Tscharntke 1999; Aizen and Feinsinger 2003; Goulson and Darvill 2004; Hines and Hendrix 2005; Goulson et ”
• The role of resources and risks in regulating wild bee populations. (2011, background): “For example, local abundance and diversity of bumble bee species on grasslands in Iowa were better explained by floral resource abundance in the grasslands within a radius of 500–700 m of the site than by the same index of local floral resources (46).”
• Landscape effects of forest loss in a pollination system (2007, background): “et al. 1997; Klein et al. 2002, 2003a, b; Cairns et al. 2005; Hines and Hendrix 2005 ) would reveal more completely representative of the entire functional group (Kevan et al. 1997; Belaoussoff et al. 2003).”