PMID- 17149583
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 20070925
LR  - 20220716
IS  - 0028-1042 (Print)
IS  - 0028-1042 (Linking)
VI  - 94
IP  - 6
DP  - 2007 Jun
TI  - Pollen foraging: learning a complex motor skill by bumblebees (Bombus 
      terrestris).
PG  - 459-64
AB  - To investigate how bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) learn the complex motor skills 
      involved in pollen foraging, we observed naive workers foraging on arrays of 
      nectarless poppy flowers (Papaver rhoeas) in a greenhouse. Foraging skills were 
      quantified by measuring the pollen load collected during each foraging bout and 
      relating this to the number of flowers visited and bout duration on two 
      consecutive days. The pollen standing crop (PSC) in each flower decreased 
      drastically from 0530 to 0900 hours. Therefore, we related foraging performance 
      to the changing levels of pollen available (per flower) and found that collection 
      rate increased over the course of four consecutive foraging bouts (comprising 
      between 277 and 354 individual flower visits), suggesting that learning to forage 
      for pollen represents a substantial time investment for individual foragers. The 
      pollen collection rate and size of pollen loads collected at the start of day 2 
      were markedly lower than at the end of day 1, suggesting that components of 
      pollen foraging behaviour could be subject to imperfect overnight retention. Our 
      results suggest that learning the necessary motor skills to collect pollen 
      effectively from morphologically simple flowers takes three times as many visits 
      as learning how to handle the most morphologically complex flowers to extract 
      nectar, potentially explaining why bees are more specialised in their choice of 
      pollen flowers.
FAU - Raine, Nigel E
AU  - Raine NE
AD  - School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, 327 
      Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, UK. n.e.raine@qmul.ac.uk
FAU - Chittka, Lars
AU  - Chittka L
LA  - eng
PT  - Journal Article
PT  - Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
DEP - 20061206
PL  - Germany
TA  - Naturwissenschaften
JT  - Die Naturwissenschaften
JID - 0400767
SB  - IM
MH  - Animals
MH  - Bees/*physiology
MH  - Feeding Behavior/*physiology
MH  - Female
MH  - Flowers
MH  - Motor Activity/*physiology
MH  - Papaver
MH  - *Pollen
MH  - Time Factors
EDAT- 2006/12/07 09:00
MHDA- 2007/09/26 09:00
CRDT- 2006/12/07 09:00
PHST- 2006/07/12 00:00 [received]
PHST- 2006/10/16 00:00 [accepted]
PHST- 2006/10/11 00:00 [revised]
PHST- 2006/12/07 09:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2007/09/26 09:00 [medline]
PHST- 2006/12/07 09:00 [entrez]
AID - 10.1007/s00114-006-0184-0 [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO  - Naturwissenschaften. 2007 Jun;94(6):459-64. doi: 10.1007/s00114-006-0184-0. Epub 
      2006 Dec 6.