Sporopollenin as a dilution agent in artificial diets for solitary bees
- PDF / 383,699 Bytes
- 12 Pages / 467.716 x 680.315 pts Page_size
- 102 Downloads / 168 Views
Apidologie * The Author(s), 2020 DOI: 10.1007/s13592-020-00801-1
Sporopollenin as a dilution agent in artificial diets for solitary bees Fiona TAINSH1 , Shannon R. WOODMANSEY1 , Alexander J. AUSTIN1,2 , Toby E. BAGNALL1 , James D. J. GILBERT1 1 University of Hull, Hull, UK Ku-ring-gai Council, Gordon, NSW, Australia
2
Received 24 December 2019 – Revised 13 July 2020 – Accepted 3 August 2020
Abstract – Nutritional studies often require precise control of nutrients via dilution of artificial diets with indigestible material, but such studies in bees are limited. Common diluents like cellulose typically result in total mortality of bee larvae, making quantitative studies difficult. We investigated potential alternative dietary dilution agents, sporopollenin (pollen exines) and agar. We reared Osmia bicornis larvae on pollen diluted with these substances, alongside undiluted controls. Sporopollenin neither prevented nor improved survival, suggesting it is a suitable diluent. Agar appeared marginally to increase survival and its suitability requires further research. Both substances reduced cocoon weight, and sporopollenin also prolonged development, suggesting processing costs. Determining the physiological mechanisms driving these responses requires further work. Our findings should facilitate studies involving nutritional manipulations for solitary bees. Artificial diet / Dilution agent / Solitary bee / Nutritional ecology / Geometric framework
1. INTRODUCTION Artificial diets are integral to studies of animal nutritional ecology, because they allow hypothesis testing using controlled manipulation of constituent nutrients (Roulston and Cane 2002). For example, particularly insightful in nutritional ecology has been the Geometric Framework for Nutrition (GF) (Raubenheimer and Simpson 1993). In this technique, arrays of artificial diets are created containing different ratios and densities of Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s13592-020-00801-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Corresponding author: D. J. Gilbert, [email protected] Fiona Tainsh and Shannon Woodmansey contributed equally to this work. Manuscript editor: Mathieu Lihoreau
macronutrients (e.g. Lee et al. 2008), making control of nutrient density via dietary dilution especially relevant. Dilution of diets with inert, indigestible material is therefore a key component in the design of these and other nutritional studies using artificial diets, as it allows control of overall nutrient density independent of the ratios of nutrients in the diet (House 1965; Gordon 1968). A suitable dilution agent should be indigestible and neither toxic nor nutritious. Which substance is appropriate depends on a species’ nutritional ecology and physiology. While water is usually used to dilute artificial diets for liquid feeders (Abisgold et al. 1994; Lee et al. 2008; Hawley et al. 2014), cellulose is a more common dietary diluent in studies of feeding where solid a
Data Loading...
