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      Pollen Protein: Lipid Macronutrient Ratios May Guide Broad Patterns of Bee Species Floral Preferences

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          Abstract

          Pollinator nutritional ecology provides insights into plant–pollinator interactions, coevolution, and the restoration of declining pollinator populations. Bees obtain their protein and lipid nutrient intake from pollen, which is essential for larval growth and development as well as adult health and reproduction. Our previous research revealed that pollen protein to lipid ratios (P:L) shape bumble bee foraging preferences among pollen host-plant species, and these preferred ratios link to bumble bee colony health and fitness. Yet, we are still in the early stages of integrating data on P:L ratios across plant and bee species. Here, using a standard laboratory protocol, we present over 80 plant species’ protein and lipid concentrations and P:L values, and we evaluate the P:L ratios of pollen collected by three bee species. We discuss the general phylogenetic, phenotypic, behavioral, and ecological trends observed in these P:L ratios that may drive plant–pollinator interactions; we also present future research questions to further strengthen the field of pollination nutritional ecology. This dataset provides a foundation for researchers studying the nutritional drivers of plant–pollinator interactions as well as for stakeholders developing planting schemes to best support pollinators.

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          Influence of Pollen Nutrition on Honey Bee Health: Do Pollen Quality and Diversity Matter?

          Honey bee colonies are highly dependent upon the availability of floral resources from which they get the nutrients (notably pollen) necessary to their development and survival. However, foraging areas are currently affected by the intensification of agriculture and landscape alteration. Bees are therefore confronted to disparities in time and space of floral resource abundance, type and diversity, which might provide inadequate nutrition and endanger colonies. The beneficial influence of pollen availability on bee health is well-established but whether quality and diversity of pollen diets can modify bee health remains largely unknown. We therefore tested the influence of pollen diet quality (different monofloral pollens) and diversity (polyfloral pollen diet) on the physiology of young nurse bees, which have a distinct nutritional physiology (e.g. hypopharyngeal gland development and vitellogenin level), and on the tolerance to the microsporidian parasite Nosema ceranae by measuring bee survival and the activity of different enzymes potentially involved in bee health and defense response (glutathione-S-transferase (detoxification), phenoloxidase (immunity) and alkaline phosphatase (metabolism)). We found that both nurse bee physiology and the tolerance to the parasite were affected by pollen quality. Pollen diet diversity had no effect on the nurse bee physiology and the survival of healthy bees. However, when parasitized, bees fed with the polyfloral blend lived longer than bees fed with monofloral pollens, excepted for the protein-richest monofloral pollen. Furthermore, the survival was positively correlated to alkaline phosphatase activity in healthy bees and to phenoloxydase activities in infected bees. Our results support the idea that both the quality and diversity (in a specific context) of pollen can shape bee physiology and might help to better understand the influence of agriculture and land-use intensification on bee nutrition and health.
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            Diet effects on honeybee immunocompetence.

            The maintenance of the immune system can be costly, and a lack of dietary protein can increase the susceptibility of organisms to disease. However, few studies have investigated the relationship between protein nutrition and immunity in insects. Here, we tested in honeybees (Apis mellifera) whether dietary protein quantity (monofloral pollen) and diet diversity (polyfloral pollen) can shape baseline immunocompetence (IC) by measuring parameters of individual immunity (haemocyte concentration, fat body content and phenoloxidase activity) and glucose oxidase (GOX) activity, which enables bees to sterilize colony and brood food, as a parameter of social immunity. Protein feeding modified both individual and social IC but increases in dietary protein quantity did not enhance IC. However, diet diversity increased IC levels. In particular, polyfloral diets induced higher GOX activity compared with monofloral diets, including protein-richer diets. These results suggest a link between protein nutrition and immunity in honeybees and underscore the critical role of resource availability on pollinator health.
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              Pollen nutritional content and digestibility for animals

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Insects
                Insects
                insects
                Insects
                MDPI
                2075-4450
                18 February 2020
                February 2020
                : 11
                : 2
                : 132
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Biology, University of Nevada Reno, Reno, NV 89557, USA; jacob.franci@ 123456gmail.com (J.S.F.); anneleonard@ 123456unr.edu (A.S.L.)
                [2 ]Department of Entomology, Center for Pollinator Research, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA; tooker@ 123456psu.edu (J.F.T.); hmpatch@ 123456psu.edu (H.M.P.); hmh19@ 123456psu.edu (H.M.H.); ezt5142@ 123456psu.edu (E.D.T.); ecy7@ 123456cornell.edu (E.Y.); cmgrozinger@ 123456psu.edu (C.M.G.)
                [3 ]Fruit Research and Extension Center, Pennsylvania State University, Biglerville, PA 17307, USA; djb134@ 123456psu.edu
                [4 ]Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA; michael.coccia@ 123456ucsf.edu
                [5 ]Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Huck Institute of the Life Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA; mkc206@ 123456psu.edu
                [6 ]Ernst Conservation Seeds, Inc., Meadville, PA 16335, USA; hortpath@ 123456ernstseed.com (M.F.); swunderley@ 123456gmail.com (S.W.J.)
                [7 ]Museum of Life and Science, Durham, NC 27704, USA; mhodges5961@ 123456gmail.com
                [8 ]Laboratory of Zoology, University of Mons, Mons B-7000, Belgium; denis.michez@ 123456umons.ac.be (D.M.); maryse.vanderplanck@ 123456umons.ac.be (M.V.)
                [9 ]Ecological Security and Protection Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Mianyang Normal University, Mianyang 621000, China; mujunpeng@ 123456gmail.com
                [10 ]Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA; lrusso@ 123456utk.edu
                [11 ]Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA; maliheh.safari@ 123456ucsf.edu
                Author notes
                [* ]Correspondence: advaudo@ 123456gmail.com
                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5268-5580
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9303-6699
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3534-3113
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8880-1838
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7343-9837
                https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9555-0395
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0110-8019
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3543-3717
                Article
                insects-11-00132
                10.3390/insects11020132
                7074338
                32085627
                f0485779-e409-4bf9-a6a0-fee8df3a33d8
                © 2020 by the authors.

                Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

                History
                : 03 January 2020
                : 15 February 2020
                Categories
                Article

                bee health,floral rewards,nutritional ecology,pollen foraging behavior,pollination ecology,plant–pollinator interactions

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