›› 2008, Vol. 51 ›› Issue (9): 946-952.

• RESEARCH PAPERS • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Foraging preference of the bumblebee Bombus hypocrita (Hymenoptera:Apidae)

SHI Hai-Yan   

  • Online:2008-09-20 Published:2008-09-20

Abstract: While foraging insect pollinators often restrict their visits to one type of flower. We measured nine types of floral selectivity (preference) in the bumblebee Bombus hypocrita workers foraging on mixed arrays of artificial flower types differing in either colour only (variation in a single trait) or colour plus additional traits (variation in multiple traits). The results showed that there was a significant degree of preference as the number of flower traits (including sizemorph and odour) was increased (P<0.01). There was a descreasing tendency for foraging rate as the number of flower colours was increased from two to fourand no significant relationship between the number of flower colours and preferenceP>0.05. The number (108±9) of 5 cm purple flowers visited by B. hypocrita was significantly higher than that (40±4) of 3 cm purple flowers (P<0.01)suggesting thatB. hypocrita has a preference for visiting 5 cm purple flower. The number (63±8) of purple flowers with lemony flavour visited by B. hypocrita was significantly lower than that (88±2) of purple flowers with strawberry flavour (P<0.05) suggesting that B. hypocrita had a preference for visiting the purple flowers with strawberry flavour.

Key words: Bombus hypocrita, pollination, floral traits, foraging behavior preferenc