bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.19.436119; this version posted March 20, 2021. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. 1 Bumblebees can detect floral humidity 2 3 4 Michael J. M. Harrap1,2*, Natalie Hempel de Ibarra2, Henry D. Knowles1,3, Heather M. 5 Whitney1 & Sean A. Rands1 6 1. School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1TQ, United Kingdom 7 2. Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour, School of Psychology, University of Exeter, 8 Exeter EX4 4QG 9 3. Natural Resources Wales, Maes Newydd, Llandarcy, Neath Port Talbot, SA10 6JQ 10 * Corresponding author. 11 12 Corresponding author email:
[email protected] 13 14 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.19.436119; this version posted March 20, 2021. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. 15 Summary statement 16 We demonstrate for the first time that bumblebees show a preference to elevated floral 17 humidity and can learn to distinguish flowers that differ in floral humidity levels. 18 19 Abstract 20 Floral humidity, a region of elevated humidity proximal to the flower, occurs in many plant 21 species and may add to their multimodal floral displays.