[MCN] Life can be good for the urban social bee

[Lance Olsen]

Ecology and Evolution March 2016

Urban gardens promote bee foraging over natural habitats and plantations
Benjamin F. Kaluza, Helen Wallace, Tim A. Heard, 
Alexandra-Maria Klein, Sara D. Leonhardt

Abstract
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.1941/full

Increasing human land use for agriculture and 
housing leads to the loss of natural habitat and 
to widespread declines in wild bees. Bee foraging 
dynamics and fitness depend on the availability 
of resources in the surrounding landscape, but 
how precisely landscape related resource 
differences affect bee foraging patterns remains 
unclear. To investigate how landscape and its 
interaction with season and weather drive 
foraging and resource intake in social bees, we 
experimentally compared foraging activity, the 
allocation of foragers to different resources 
(pollen, nectar, and resin) and overall resource 
intake in the Australian stingless bee 
Tetragonula carbonaria (Apidae, Meliponini). Bee 
colonies were monitored in different seasons over 
two years. We compared foraging patterns and 
resource intake between the bees' natural habitat 
(forests) and two landscapes differently altered 
by humans (suburban gardens and agricultural 
macadamia plantations). We found foraging 
activity as well as pollen and nectar forager 
numbers to be highest in suburban gardens, 
intermediate in forests and low in plantations. 
Foraging patterns further differed between 
seasons, but seasonal variations strongly 
differed between landscapes. Sugar and pollen 
intake was low in plantations, but contrary with 
our predictions, it was even higher in gardens 
than in forests. In contrast, resin intake was 
similar across landscapes. Consequently, 
differences in resource availability between 
natural and altered landscapes strongly affect 
foraging patterns and thus resource intake in 
social bees. While agricultural monocultures 
largely reduce foraging success, suburban gardens 
can increase resource intake well above rates 
found in natural habitats of bees, indicating 
that human activities can both decrease and 
increase the availability of resources in a 
landscape and thus reduce or enhance bee fitness.

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"Climate change is not a new topic in biologyŠ 
Observations of range shifts in parallel with 
climate change Š date back to the mid-1700s."

Parmesan, Camille. Ecological and Evolutionary 
Responses to Recent Climate Change. The Annual 
Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 
2006. 37:637-69. First published online as a 
Review in Advance on August 24, 2006 
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