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Student 10-Minute Paper

Systematics, Evolution, and Biodiversity

Student Competition

Student

Grad Competition SysEB: Biodiversity and Evolution

Solo or duet dancers? Validation of honey bee recruitment dances as bio-indicators for native bees

Monday, November 6, 2023
11:30 AM – 11:42 AM ET
Location: Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, Chesapeake 4-5
In-Person Student Competition
Pollinators provide important ecosystem services, with managed and native bees alone contributing up to $577 billion yearly in pollination services to agriculture. With colony collapses of honey bees, a lot of pollinator research has focused on managed bee health, but it is becoming increasingly clear that non-managed bees sometimes provide superior pollination services. However, there is a major challenge in measuring the health of native bee populations. In this project, we validate the use of European Honey bees, Apis mellifera L., as a bioindicator for native bee population health at a landscape level. Honey bees are generalist foragers, and we can understand where they collect their food by decoding waggle dances of returning foragers. We previously decoded more than 11k waggle dances across 3 field sites in Virginia , each characterized by unique landscape types (row crops in Suffolk, mixed-use in Blacksburg, and fruit orchards in Winchester). These data tell us where honey bees find abundant food. We have now surveyed for two years the native bee populations using bee bowls, blue vane traps, and hand nets to test if honey bee foraging can predict native bee abundance, richness, and diversity. In particular, we expected honey bee foraging patterns to be good predictors for bees with similar needs as honey bees: generalist, eusocial, cavity nesting bees of medium size. We therefore discuss our findings of native bee catch broken down by functional groups (generalist/specialist, etc.), size, and social organization.