Foraging on resources that are fixed in space but that replenish over time, such as floral nectar and pollen, presents animals with the problem of selecting a foraging route. What can flower visitors such as bees do to optimize their foraging routes, that is, reduce return time or route distance? Some repeatedly visit a set of plants in a significantly predictable sequence (so-called ‘‘trapline...

The western honey bee, Apis mellifera , is the most important and widespread managed pollinator species. Honey bee diet based on nectar pollen, pollen diversity composition, in particular, affect colony health fitness. As landscape composition strongly linked to floral resource heterogeneity, it could influence intake of bees. This work aimed explore how collected by bees was modulated seasonal...

The night is a special niche characterized by dim light, lower temperatures, and higher humidity compared to the day. Several animals have made the transition from the day into the night and have acquired unique adaptations to cope with the challenges of performing nocturnal activities. Several plant species have opted to bloom at night, possibly as a response to aridity to prevent excessive wa...

abstract the syrphidae family with almost 6000 described species, 15 tribes and 3 subfamilies is one of the largest families of diptera. they known as hoverflies or flowerflies. the larvae of subfamily syrphinae are considered the specialized aphidophagous predators play an important role in the reduction of aphid populations in agroecosystems. almost all the adult syrphids feed on pollen or ne...

We compared pollen removal and deposition by hummingbirds and bumblebees visiting bird-syndrome Penstemon barbatus and bee-syndrome P. strictus flowers. One model for evolutionary shifts from bee pollination to bird pollination has assumed that, mostly due to grooming, pollen on bee bodies quickly becomes unavailable for transfer to stigmas, whereas pollen on hummingbirds has greater carryover....

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) collect and store both honey and pollen in preserved forms. Pollen storage involves the addition of honey or nectar and oral secretions to pollen granules. It is controversial whether the duration of pollen storage alters the palatability or nutritive value of the pollen storage medium. We examined how bees utilize different-aged stored pollen during an extended poll...

Correlations between traits may constrain ecological and evolutionary responses to multispecies interactions. Many plants produce defensive compounds in nectar and leaves that could influence interactions with pollinators and herbivores, but the relationship between nectar and leaf defences is entirely unexplored. Correlations between leaf and nectar traits may be mediated by resources and prio...

This NECTAR track paper (NECTAR: new scientific and technical advances in research) summarizes recent research and curation activities at the CLARIN center Stuttgart. CLARIN is a European initiative to advance research in humanities and social sciences by providing language-based resources via a shared distributed infrastructure. We provide an overview of the resources (i.e., corpora, lexical r...

The stingless bee Trigona carbonaria is a small, shiny black bee native to Australia. These bees collect pollen and nectar in much the same way as the well-known honey bee Apis mellifera, but can be more effective at pollination because as well as crawling over the anthers, they crawl over the style of the flower, delivering pollen to the stigma. The main scanning electron micrograph above show...