![]() The study indicates that ozone could also affect insects' other odour-controlled behaviours such attracting a mate. At the edge of plumes, which degraded more quickly, 32% of honeybees recognised a flower from 6 m away and just a tenth of the insects from 12 m away. The research showed that towards the centre of plumes, 52% of honeybees recognised an odour at 6 metres, decreasing to 38% at 12 m. Pollinating insects use floral odours to find flowers and learn to associate their unique blend of chemical compounds with the amount of nectar it provides, allowing them to locate the same species in the future. Honeybees were trained to recognise the same odour blend and then exposed to the new, ozone-modified odours. As well as decreasing the size of the odour plume the scientists found that the scent of the plume changed substantially as certain compounds reacted away much faster than others. The researchers used a 30-m wind tunnel at Surrey University to monitor how the size and shape of odour plumes changed in the presence of ozone. ![]() Therefore, understanding what adversely affects pollination, and how, is essential to helping us preserve the critical services that we reply upon for production of food, textiles, biofuels and medicines, for example." International research has already established that ozone has a negative impact on food production because it damages plant growth.ĭr Ben Langford, an atmospheric scientist at UKCEH who led the study said: "Some 75% of our food crops and nearly 90% of wild flowering plants depend, to some extent, upon animal pollination, particularly by insects. The findings suggest that ozone is likely to be having a negative impact on wildflower abundance and crop yields. Professor Christian Pfrang from the University of Birmingham who collaborated on the research said: "Our study provides robust evidence that the changes due to ground-level ozone on floral scent cause pollinators to struggle to carry out their crucial role in the natural environment also with implications for food security." Ground-level ozone typically forms when nitrogen oxide emissions from vehicles and industrial processes react with volatile organic compounds emitted from vegetation in the presence of sunlight. The team concludes that "these interactions may favour spatial partitioning, thereby maximising the foraging efficiency of individuals and colonies," so the bee-on-bee tussles ultimately mean that colony as a whole makes the most effective possible use of the flowers in its vicinity.A research team comprising the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) and the Universities of Birmingham, Reading, Surrey and Southern Queensland, found that ozone substantially changes the size and scent of floral odour plumes given off by flowers, and that it reduced honeybees' ability to recognise odours by up to 90% from just a few metres away. Resource depletion was also a key factor in the bees' behaviour, causing experienced bees in particular to extend their range to include other flowers when nectar supplies along their route were depleted. Resident bees tended to maintain their existing foraging areas by more frequently visiting familiar flowers and kicking out newcomers when they found them.īy contrast, in the rare instances when newcomers evicted established bees, they "prioritized revisits to flowers from which they had successfully evicted residents and obtained a nectar reward, presumably to establish their own foraging area." This resulted in an overlap between the bees' foraging areas as a result of competitive interactions. ![]() However, the team noted that "bees were never observed to bite or sting each other."Īlthough "inexperienced bees discovering a new foraging environment tend to copy the flower choices of other foragers to identify the most rewarding flowers" - using olfactory markers, rather than visual cues, to tell where the other bee had been - they were typically met with hostility, and the established resident bee was more likely to start an engagement than the newcomer. They found that, if two bees landed on the same flower, they'd only feed together 6.3 percent of the time - the other 93.7 percent of encounters resulted in the bees trying to push each other off the platform using their head or legs, ending in one or sometimes both leaving the feeding platform. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |