Can bees meet their nutritional needs in the current UK landscape?

在当前英国的环境下，蜜蜂能满足它们的营养需求吗？

• 批准号: BB/I000445/1
• 负责人: Philip Stevenson
• 金额: $ 6.04万
• 依托单位: Royal Botanic Gardens
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2011 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FI000445%2F1
• 关键词: bees; meet; their; nutritional; needs

An important but often overlooked reason that bee populations are in decline is likely to be that these important pollinators can no longer obtain adequate nutrition as a result of changes in land management practices worldwide. This proposal will investigate how honeybees and bumblebees meet their nutritional needs and will also examine the nutritional value of pollen and nectar of selected UK plant species with the aim of predicting when bee pollinators in the UK experience nutritional short-falls. Insects, and in particular bee species, are responsible for the sexual reproduction of a highly diverse range of plants, many of which are agricultural crops. Over 39 crops in the UK alone depend upon insect pollinators for fruit and seed production. In natural habitats, a colony of 'generalist' bees such as honeybees will visit the flowers of potentially hundreds of different plant species to find food. In the past 50 years, our landscape has changed to accommodate modern farming practices that cultivate large fields of single crop species. Nutritional balance becomes extremely important in monoculture situations: honeybee colonies used for pollination services have little or no choice of food and limited access to natural vegetation.. Ironically, while crops like oilseed rape may provide vast expanses of pollen and nectar when they are in flower, we do not know if these floral resources provide adequate nutrition for bees. In fact, species like honeybees may be obliged to forage for pollen and nectar from a variety of plants to obtain adequate nutrition, but this has never been established. Using a sophisticated modelling approach that has been developed to study nutrition in many other animals, we will experimentally determine the ratio of protein and carbohydrates that adult workers and larval bees need to perform at their best. We will also examine how changes in environmental conditions, infection with pathogens, exposure to pesticides, or consumption of toxins affect a bee's nutritional needs. Honeybees and bumblebees learn to associate floral traits with food and so can exploit flowers that are currently in bloom. By placing bees under circumstances where they are forced to eat unbalanced foods, we will test whether malnourishment causes bees to learn to select foods that complete their diet. Honeybees are social insects that communicate information about floral resources to other workers within the hive via the 'dance language' in order to rapidly exploit available food sources. We will also examine whether nutritional imbalance causes bees to dance more vigorously for nutritionally complete foods. An important component of our proposed research will use a series of biochemical analyses to determine the nutritional value of pollen and nectar of important bee-pollinated plants. We will focus our investigation on important UK crops (e.g. oilseed rape, apples, peas), plants found in natural UK landscapes including invasive species (e.g. clover, heather, Himalayan balsalm), and plants found in urban gardens (e.g. mint, rhododendrons, cucumbers). Combining this information with a careful analysis of the existing scientific literature, we will construct an online database of the nutritional value of pollen and nectar of flowering plants in order to share this information with the general public. When combined with the experiments that determine optimal bee nutrition, we anticipate that the research described in our proposal will aid beekeepers, farmers, land managers, and scientists in thwarting bee decline worldwide, by providing a sound scientific basis for designing strategies to ensure that bees have access to sufficient nutrients.

蜜蜂数量下降的一个重要但经常被忽视的原因可能是，由于全球土地管理实践的变化，这些重要的授粉媒介无法再获得足够的营养。该提案将调查蜜蜂和大黄蜂如何满足其营养需求，还将检查选定的英国植物物种的花粉和花蜜的营养价值，目的是预测英国的蜜蜂传粉者何时会出现营养短缺。昆虫，特别是蜜蜂，负责多种植物的有性繁殖，其中许多是农作物。仅在英国就有超过 39 种作物依靠昆虫授粉来生产水果和种子。在自然栖息地中，一群“通才”蜜蜂（例如蜜蜂）会访问可能数百种不同植物物种的花朵来寻找食物。在过去的 50 年里，我们的景观发生了变化，以适应现代农业实践，种植大片单一作物品种。在单一栽培的情况下，营养平衡变得极其重要：用于授粉服务的蜂群几乎没有或根本没有食物选择，并且获得自然植被的机会也有限。具有讽刺意味的是，油菜等作物在开花时可能会提供大量的花粉和花蜜，我们不知道这些花卉资源是否为蜜蜂提供了足够的营养。事实上，像蜜蜂这样的物种可能不得不从各种植物中采集花粉和花蜜以获得足够的营养，但这一点从未得到证实。使用一种为研究许多其他动物的营养而开发的复杂模型方法，我们将通过实验确定成年工蜂和幼虫蜜蜂发挥最佳性能所需的蛋白质和碳水化合物的比例。我们还将研究环境条件的变化、病原体感染、接触杀虫剂或毒素的消耗如何影响蜜蜂的营养需求。蜜蜂和大黄蜂学会将花朵特征与食物联系起来，因此可以利用当前盛开的花朵。通过将蜜蜂置于被迫吃不均衡食物的环境中，我们将测试营养不良是否会导致蜜蜂学会选择补充其饮食的食物。蜜蜂是群居昆虫，它们通过“舞蹈语言”向蜂巢内的其他工蜂传达有关花卉资源的信息，以快速利用可用的食物来源。我们还将研究营养不平衡是否会导致蜜蜂为了获取营养全面的食物而更加活跃地跳舞。我们提出的研究的一个重要组成部分将使用一系列生化分析来确定重要的蜜蜂授粉植物的花粉和花蜜的营养价值。我们将重点调查英国重要作物（例如油菜、苹果、豌豆）、英国自然景观中发现的植物，包括入侵物种（例如三叶草、石南花、喜马拉雅香脂）以及城市花园中发现的植物（例如薄荷、杜鹃花、黄瓜）。结合这些信息与对现有科学文献的仔细分析，我们将构建一个有关开花植物花粉和花蜜营养价值的在线数据库，以便与公众分享这些信息。当与确定最佳蜜蜂营养的实验相结合时，我们预计我们提案中描述的研究将帮助养蜂人、农民、土地管理者和科学家阻止全球蜜蜂的衰退，为设计策略提供坚实的科学基础，以确保蜜蜂获得足够的营养。

项目成果

Dietary PUFAs drive diverse system-level changes in lipid metabolism.

• DOI: 10.1016/j.molmet.2022.101457
• 发表时间: 2022-05
• 期刊: Molecular metabolism
• 影响因子: 8.1
• 作者: Furse S;Virtue S;Snowden SG;Vidal-Puig A;Stevenson PC;Chiarugi D;Koulman A
• 通讯作者: Koulman A

Disease where you dine: plant species and floral traits associated with pathogen transmission in bumble bees.

• DOI: 10.1002/ecy.2503
• 发表时间: 2018-11
• 期刊: Ecology
• 影响因子: 4.8
• 作者: Adler LS;Michaud KM;Ellner SP;McArt SH;Stevenson PC;Irwin RE
• 通讯作者: Irwin RE

Toxins induce 'malaise' behaviour in the honeybee (Apis mellifera).

• DOI: 10.1007/s00359-014-0932-0
• 发表时间: 2014-10
• 期刊: Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology
• 作者: Hurst V;Stevenson PC;Wright GA
• 通讯作者: Wright GA

Plant toxin levels in nectar vary spatially across native and introduced populations

• DOI: 10.1111/1365-2745.12573
• 发表时间: 2016-07-01
• 期刊: JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY
• 影响因子: 5.5
• 作者: Egan, Paul A.;Stevenson, Phillip C.;Stout, Jane C.
• 通讯作者: Stout, Jane C.

Traffic Analysis Reveals the Impact of Dietary Intake on Lipid Metabolism

流量分析揭示膳食摄入对脂质代谢的影响

• DOI: 10.1096/fasebj.2021.35.s1.01877
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: The FASEB Journal
• 作者: Furse S