Urban bumblebees diversify their foraging strategy to maintain nutrient intake

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Authors

Simonetta Selva, Marco Moretti, Fabian Ruedenauer, Alexander Keller, Bertrand Fournier, Sara D. Leonhardt, Helen A. Eggenberger, Joan Casanelles Abella

Abstract

Anthropogenic ecosystems can alter individual functions and ecological processes such as resource use and species interactions. While variability on morphological traits involved in diet and resource use has been observed between urban and non-urban populations of pollinators, the consequences on the dietary and pollen transportation patterns remain poorly understood. Here, we investigate the variability in the diet breadth of rural and urban individuals of two bumblebee species and the consequences for nutrient intake and pollen transportation. We show that urban bumblebees exhibit a broader diet breadth than their rural counterparts, driven by the enhanced floral diversity in cities. However, we found that the nutrient intake remained similar across urban and rural ecosystems. Finally, we found distinct pollen transportation between urban and rural individuals. Our findings highlight the importance of considering complementary facets of species’ diet and interactions when assessing the effects of anthropogenic ecosystems.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.32942/X2Q04N

Subjects

Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Life Sciences

Keywords

pollination; plant-pollinator interactions; feeding behavior; land-use changes; urban biodiversity; intraspecific trait variability

Dates

Published: 2024-10-17 04:21

Last Updated: 2024-10-17 11:21

License

CC-BY Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

Additional Metadata

Language:
English

Conflict of interest statement:
None

Data and Code Availability Statement:
Morphological trait data can be found in Eggenberger et al., (2019). Plant trait data can be found in Casanelles-Abella et al., (2021), Filipiak et al., (2022) and Tew et al., (2021). Plant composition data can be obtained from GBIF (2022) and from InfoFlora (2022). Raw data on metabarcoding is archived at NCBI, project PRJNA1137320. Processed response and explanatory data used in the analyses are available at EnviDAT under the doi: 10.16904/envidat.532.