Floral Species Richness Correlates with Changes in the Nutritional Quality of Larval Diets in a Stingless Bee.

ABSTRACT: Bees need food of appropriate nutritional quality to maintain their metabolic functions. They largely obtain all required nutrients from floral resources, i.e., pollen and nectar. However, the diversity, composition and nutritional quality of floral resources varies with the surrounding environment and can be strongly altered in human-impacted habitats. We investigated whether differences in plant species richness as found in the surrounding environment correlated with variation in the floral diversity and nutritional quality of larval provisions (i.e., mixtures of pollen, nectar and salivary secretions) composed by the mass-provisioning stingless bee Tetragonula carbonaria (Apidae: Meliponini). We found that the floral diversity of larval provisions increased with increasing plant

SUBMITTER: Trinkl M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7073955 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature