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--></style><title>Life can be good for the urban social
bee</title></head><body>
<div><font face="Arial"><i>Ecology and Evolution</i></font><font
face="Times"> March 2016</font><font face="Arial"><br>
<br>
</font><font face="Times"><b>Urban gardens promote bee foraging over
natural habitats and plantations</b></font><font face="Arial"><br>
</font><font face="Times">Benjamin F. Kaluza, Helen Wallace, Tim A.
Heard, Alexandra-Maria Klein, Sara D. Leonhardt</font><font
face="Arial"><br>
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Abstract<br>
<u>http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.1941/full</u><br>
<br>
</font><font face="Times">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<i>
Tetragonula carbonaria</i> (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.</font></div>
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<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1"
color="#000000"
>====================================================================<span
></span>=====<br>
"Climate change is not a new topic in biology Observations of
range shifts in parallel with climate change date back to the
mid-1700s."</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000"><br>
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 </font><br>
<font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000"></font></div>
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