Received: 5 November 2018 | Accepted: 2 April 2019 DOI: 10.1111/1365-2656.13003 RESEARCH ARTICLE Specialist foragers in forest bee communities are small, social or emerge early Colleen Smith1,2 | Lucia Weinman1,2 | Jason Gibbs3 | Rachael Winfree2 1GraDuate Program in Ecology & Evolution, Rutgers University, New Abstract Brunswick, New Jersey 1. InDiviDual pollinators that specialize on one plant species within a foraging bout 2 Department of Ecology, Evolution, and transfer more conspecific and less heterospecific pollen, positively affecting plant Natural Resources, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey reproDuction. However, we know much less about pollinator specialization at the 3Department of Entomology, University of scale of a foraging bout compared to specialization by pollinator species. Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, CanaDa 2. In this stuDy, we measured the Diversity of pollen carried by inDiviDual bees forag- Correspondence ing in forest plant communities in the miD-Atlantic United States. Colleen Smith Email:
[email protected] 3. We found that inDiviDuals frequently carried low-Diversity pollen loaDs, suggest- ing that specialization at the scale of the foraging bout is common. InDiviDuals of Funding information Xerces Society for Invertebrate solitary bee species carried higher Diversity pollen loaDs than Did inDiviDuals of Conservation; Natural Resources social bee species; the latter have been better stuDied with respect to foraging Conservation Service; GarDen Club of America bout specialization, but account for a small minority of the worlD’s bee species. Bee boDy size was positively correlated with pollen load Diversity, and inDiviDuals HanDling EDitor: Julian Resasco of polylectic (but not oligolectic) species carried increasingly Diverse pollen loaDs as the season progresseD, likely reflecting an increase in the Diversity of flowers in bloom.