Native Habitat Mitigates Feast–Famine Conditions Faced by Honey Bees in an Agricultural Landscape
Native habitat mitigates feast–famine conditions faced FROM THE COVER by honey bees in an agricultural landscape Adam G. Dolezala,1,2, Ashley L. St. Clairb,c,1, Ge Zhangc, Amy L. Tothb,c, and Matthew E. O’Nealc aDepartment of Entomology, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801; bDepartment of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011; and cDepartment of Entomology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011 Edited by David L. Denlinger, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, and approved October 25, 2019 (received for review July 24, 2019) Intensive agriculture can contribute to pollinator decline, exempli- pathogen pressure, pesticide exposure, and nutritional shortages fied by alarmingly high annual losses of honey bee colonies in (9, 11, 21, 22), all associated with anthropogenic influence (23, 24). regions dominated by annual crops (e.g., midwestern United States). How do honey bees respond to landscapes that become in- As more natural or seminatural landscapes are transformed into creasingly dominated by intensive agriculture, particularly of crops monocultures, there is growing concern over current and future considered to have limited nutritional benefit? Nationwide surveys impacts on pollinators. To forecast how landscape simplification can have shown some of the worst colony losses occur in the mid- affect bees, we conducted a replicated, longitudinal assessment of western United States (16, 18, 25), a region of major agricultural honey bee colony growth and nutritional health in an intensively production (5). Furthermore, agricultural land use has been as- farmed region where much of the landscape is devoted to produc- sociated with lower amounts of protein in stored pollen (26), lower tion of corn and soybeans.
[Show full text]