Peer Review #2 of "Combined effects of waggle dance communication and landscape heterogeneity on nectar and pollen uptake in honey bee colonies (v0.1)"

AbstractWe explored the pollen foraging behavior of honey bee colonies situated in the corn and soybean dominated agroecosystems of central Ohio over a month-long period using both pollen metabarcoding and waggle dance inference of spatial foraging patterns. For molecular pollen analysis we developed simple and cost-effective laboratory and bioinformatics methods. Targeting four plant barcode loci (ITS2, rbcL, trnL and trnH), we implemented metabarcoding library preparation and dual-indexing protocols designed to minimize amplification biases and index mis-tagging events. We constructed comprehensive, curated reference databases for hierarchical taxonomic classification of metabarcoding data and used these databases to train the Metaxa2 DNA sequence classifier. Comparisons between morphological and molecular palynology provide strong support for the quantitative potential of multi-locus metabarcoding. Results revealed consistent foraging habits between locations and show clear trends in the phenological progression of honey bee spring foraging in these agricultural areas. Our data suggest that three key taxa, woody Rosaceae such as pome fruits and hawthorns, Salix, and Trifolium provided the majority of pollen nutrition during the study. Spatially, these foraging patterns were associated with a significant preference for forests and tree lines relative to crop fields and herbaceous land cover.

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Peer Review #2 of "The influence of temperature and photoperiod on the timing of brood onset in hibernating honey bee colonies (v0.1)"

10.7287/peerj.4801v0.1/reviews/2 ◽

2018 ◽

Keyword(s):

Peer Review ◽

Honey Bee ◽

Influence Of Temperature ◽

Bee Colonies

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Combined effects of waggle dance communication and landscape heterogeneity on nectar and pollen uptake in honey bee colonies

PeerJ ◽

10.7717/peerj.3441 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 5 ◽

pp. e3441 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Fabian Nürnberger ◽

Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter ◽

Stephan Härtel

Keyword(s):

Apis Mellifera ◽

Resource Availability ◽

Weight Change ◽

Landscape Heterogeneity ◽

Waggle Dance ◽

Agricultural Landscapes ◽

Floral Resources ◽

Foraging Success ◽

Pollen Foraging ◽

Dance Communication

The instructive component of waggle dance communication has been shown to increase resource uptake of Apis mellifera colonies in highly heterogeneous resource environments, but an assessment of its relevance in temperate landscapes with different levels of resource heterogeneity is currently lacking. We hypothesized that the advertisement of resource locations via dance communication would be most relevant in highly heterogeneous landscapes with large spatial variation of floral resources. To test our hypothesis, we placed 24 Apis mellifera colonies with either disrupted or unimpaired instructive component of dance communication in eight Central European agricultural landscapes that differed in heterogeneity and resource availability. We monitored colony weight change and pollen harvest as measure of foraging success. Dance disruption did not significantly alter colony weight change, but decreased pollen harvest compared to the communicating colonies by 40%. There was no general effect of resource availability on nectar or pollen foraging success, but the effect of landscape heterogeneity on nectar uptake was stronger when resource availability was high. In contrast to our hypothesis, the effects of disrupted bee communication on nectar and pollen foraging success were not stronger in landscapes with heterogeneous compared to homogenous resource environments. Our results indicate that in temperate regions intra-colonial communication of resource locations benefits pollen foraging more than nectar foraging, irrespective of landscape heterogeneity. We conclude that the so far largely unexplored role of dance communication in pollen foraging requires further consideration as pollen is a crucial resource for colony development and health.

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