The difference in pollen harvest between Apis mellifera and Apis cerana in a Tibetan alpine meadow
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The difference in pollen harvest between Apis mellifera and Apis cerana in a Tibetan alpine meadow HU Lei
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1897-2425; e-mail: [email protected]
WU Xin-wei*
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5577-5637;
e-mail: [email protected]
* Corresponding author Department of Ecology, School of Life Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China Citation: Hu L, Wu XW (2019)The difference in pollen harvest between Apis mellifera and Apis cerana in a Tibetan alpine meadow. Journal of Mountain Science 16(7). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-018-5245-2 © Science Press, Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, CAS and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract: To explore the difference in pollen harvest between the western honey bee Apis mellifera and a native eastern honey bee A. cerana in the Zoige alpine meadows in the northeastern part of the QinghaiTibetan Plateau, we investigated species diversity of the harvested pollen and the amount of harvested pollen per bee for both species, and calculated the niche overlap (in terms of similarity in harvested pollen) between the two bee species during the flowering season from June to August 2016. Results showed that the species diversity of the harvested pollen was indistinguishable between the two bee species. Nevertheless, A. mellifera carried more (although not significant) pollens per bee than A. cerana. Moreover, pollen composition differed between the two bee species: A. mellifera mainly foraged on Anemone rivularis, Saussurea nigrescens and Anemone trullifolia, while A. cerana foraged on Anemone rivularis, Stellera chamaejasme, and Pedicularis longiflora. Consistently, the niche overlap between the two honeybee species was particularly small in several observations. Our results indicate a niche separation in pollen resource between the two honeybee species in a Tibetan alpine meadow. Keywords: Apiculture; Introduced bees; Niche separation; Pollen richness; Qinghai-Tibet Plateau; Alpine meadow
Introduction Since honeybees were domesticated about Received: 11-Oct-2018 Revised: 19-Mar-2019 Accepted: 25-Apr-2019
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4000 years ago (Crane 1990), apiculture has become one of the most productive agricultural industries in the world (Moritz et al. 2005). For example, the estimated production of the world natural honey was about 1.2 million tons in 2015 (Kaur et al. 2016). Although the large numbers of honeybee colonies are beneficial to the productive success of both agricultural crops and wild plants that depend on insect pollination, introduced honeybees also result in a series of ecological threats on native ecosystems (Goras et al. 2016). Numerous studies have shown that introduced honeybees can reduce survival, growth, reproduction, and feeding behavior of native pollinators (Cross & Mackay 1998; Kato et al. 1999; Thorp et al. 2000; Cross 2001; Singh et al. 2015; Liu et al. 2016) because of their competitive superiority (Miller & Aplet 1992). For example, the introduced Apis mellifera reduced the
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