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Honeybees’ foraging choices for nectar and pollen revealed by DNA metabarcoding

Honeybees are the most widespread managed pollinators of our food crops, and a crucial part of their well-being is a suitable diet. Yet, we do not know how they choose flowers to collect nectar or pollen from. Here we studied forty-three honeybee colonies in six apiaries over a summer, identifying t...

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Autores principales: Leponiemi, Matti, Freitak, Dalial, Moreno-Torres, Miguel, Pferschy-Wenzig, Eva-Maria, Becker-Scarpitta, Antoine, Tiusanen, Mikko, Vesterinen, Eero J., Wirta, Helena
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10484984/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37679501
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-42102-4
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author Leponiemi, Matti
Freitak, Dalial
Moreno-Torres, Miguel
Pferschy-Wenzig, Eva-Maria
Becker-Scarpitta, Antoine
Tiusanen, Mikko
Vesterinen, Eero J.
Wirta, Helena
author_facet Leponiemi, Matti
Freitak, Dalial
Moreno-Torres, Miguel
Pferschy-Wenzig, Eva-Maria
Becker-Scarpitta, Antoine
Tiusanen, Mikko
Vesterinen, Eero J.
Wirta, Helena
author_sort Leponiemi, Matti
collection PubMed
description Honeybees are the most widespread managed pollinators of our food crops, and a crucial part of their well-being is a suitable diet. Yet, we do not know how they choose flowers to collect nectar or pollen from. Here we studied forty-three honeybee colonies in six apiaries over a summer, identifying the floral origins of honey and hive-stored pollen samples by DNA-metabarcoding. We recorded the available flowering plants and analyzed the specialized metabolites in honey. Overall, we find that honeybees use mostly the same plants for both nectar and pollen, yet per colony less than half of the plant genera are used for both nectar and pollen at a time. Across samples, on average fewer plant genera were used for pollen, but the composition was more variable among samples, suggesting higher selectivity for pollen sources. Of the available flowering plants, honeybees used only a fraction for either nectar or pollen foraging. The time of summer guided the plant choices the most, and the location impacted both the plants selected and the specialized metabolite composition in honey. Thus, honeybees are selective for both nectar and pollen, implicating a need of a wide variety of floral resources to choose an optimal diet from.
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spelling pubmed-104849842023-09-09 Honeybees’ foraging choices for nectar and pollen revealed by DNA metabarcoding Leponiemi, Matti Freitak, Dalial Moreno-Torres, Miguel Pferschy-Wenzig, Eva-Maria Becker-Scarpitta, Antoine Tiusanen, Mikko Vesterinen, Eero J. Wirta, Helena Sci Rep Article Honeybees are the most widespread managed pollinators of our food crops, and a crucial part of their well-being is a suitable diet. Yet, we do not know how they choose flowers to collect nectar or pollen from. Here we studied forty-three honeybee colonies in six apiaries over a summer, identifying the floral origins of honey and hive-stored pollen samples by DNA-metabarcoding. We recorded the available flowering plants and analyzed the specialized metabolites in honey. Overall, we find that honeybees use mostly the same plants for both nectar and pollen, yet per colony less than half of the plant genera are used for both nectar and pollen at a time. Across samples, on average fewer plant genera were used for pollen, but the composition was more variable among samples, suggesting higher selectivity for pollen sources. Of the available flowering plants, honeybees used only a fraction for either nectar or pollen foraging. The time of summer guided the plant choices the most, and the location impacted both the plants selected and the specialized metabolite composition in honey. Thus, honeybees are selective for both nectar and pollen, implicating a need of a wide variety of floral resources to choose an optimal diet from. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-09-07 /pmc/articles/PMC10484984/ /pubmed/37679501 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-42102-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Leponiemi, Matti
Freitak, Dalial
Moreno-Torres, Miguel
Pferschy-Wenzig, Eva-Maria
Becker-Scarpitta, Antoine
Tiusanen, Mikko
Vesterinen, Eero J.
Wirta, Helena
Honeybees’ foraging choices for nectar and pollen revealed by DNA metabarcoding
title Honeybees’ foraging choices for nectar and pollen revealed by DNA metabarcoding
title_full Honeybees’ foraging choices for nectar and pollen revealed by DNA metabarcoding
title_fullStr Honeybees’ foraging choices for nectar and pollen revealed by DNA metabarcoding
title_full_unstemmed Honeybees’ foraging choices for nectar and pollen revealed by DNA metabarcoding
title_short Honeybees’ foraging choices for nectar and pollen revealed by DNA metabarcoding
title_sort honeybees’ foraging choices for nectar and pollen revealed by dna metabarcoding
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10484984/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37679501
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-42102-4
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