Abstract
Declines in insect pollinators in Europe have been linked to changes in land use. Pollinator nutrition is dependent on floral resources (i.e., nectar and pollen), which are linked to landscape composition. Here, we present a stratified analysis of the nutritional composition of beebread in managed honeybee hives with a view to examining potential sources of variation in its nutritional composition. Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that beebread composition correlates with local land use and therefore available floral resources. The results demonstrated that the starch, lipid, and moisture contents of beebread are all highly conserved across hives, whereas levels of protein and nonreducing sugar increased as the year progressed, reducing sugars, however, decreased during the first half of the year and then increased toward the end. Local land use around hives was quantified using data from the Countryside Survey 2007 Land Cover Map. Bee-bread protein content was negatively correlated with increasing levels of arable and horticultural farmland surrounding hives and positively correlated with the cover of natural grasslands and broadleaf woodlands. Reducing sugar content was also positively correlated with the amount of broad-leaved woodland in a 3 Km² radius from the hives. Previous studies on a range of invertebrates, including honeybees, indicate that dietary protein intake may have a major impact on correlates of fitness, including longevity and immune function. The finding that beebread protein content correlates with land use suggests that landscape composition may impact on insect pollinator well-being and provides a link between landscape and the nutritional ecology of socially foraging insects in a way not previously considered.
Highlights
Resource availability, and its impact on forager nutrition, is a key factor driving the geographic and temporal distributions of many animals (Simpson and Raubenheimer 2012), and changes in resource availability may drive changes in ecosystem structure if organisms shift their habitat use and range in response to temporal and spatial variation in the availability of key resources (Beckerman et al 2010)
Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Analysis of the nutritional composition of the 576 beebread samples showed that the major nutritional constituent was protein (mean concentration wet weight (w.w.) = 659.2 mgÁgÀ1 Æ 196.7; 66%), followed by reducing sugars (143.4 mgÁgÀ1 Æ 71.39 w.w.; 14%) and nonreducing sugars (116.9 mgÁgÀ1 Æ 91.2 w.w.; 12%)
Summary
Its impact on forager nutrition, is a key factor driving the geographic and temporal distributions of many animals (Simpson and Raubenheimer 2012), and changes in resource availability may drive changes in ecosystem structure if organisms shift their habitat use and range in response to temporal and spatial variation in the availability of key resources (Beckerman et al 2010). Recent studies suggest that widespread declines in many insect pollinator species across much of Europe are most likely due to a combination of land use change (such as through agricultural intensification), habitat degradation, and the spread of disease (Potts et al 2010; Breeze et al 2014). A decline in honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) populations is likely to have important consequences for agriculture, as this species accounts for around 90% of commercial pollination of animal-pollinated plants, translating to approximately 35% of global food production (Steffan-Dewenter et al 2005; Klein et al 2007). Honeybees forage on flowering plants and can accrue all of their nutritional requirements (i.e., amino acids, vitamins minerals, proteins, and carbohydrates) from the pollen and nectar these provide (Herbert and Shimanuki 1978; Morgano et al 2012).
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