The diversity of pollinator species during the fall and winter season

The diversity of pollinator species during the fall and winter season was quite scarce. Although there were a few other species, such as butterflies, dragonflies, hummingbirds and wasps, the abundance of the observations was that of honey bees. Furthermore, the other species were mostly seen by themselves, while the honey bees were in groups of 5 to 8. This might be due to the way honey bees live (in colonies). It is not a surprise that bees are the most abundant of the pollinators; however, the surprise was that there was an lack of all of the other species such as butterflies. This lead to the assumption that during the fall and winter season, the other pollinator species become less active; whereas bees are still very much active. Or another assumptions is that, because of the scarcity of flowering plants during the fall and winter, there is also a lack of pollinators.

References:

Danner, N., Keller, A., Härtel, S., & Steffan-Dewenter, I. (2017). Honey bee foraging ecology: Season but not landscape diversity shapes the amount and diversity of collected pollen. Plos ONE, 12(8), 1-14. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0183716

Hofmann, S., Everaars, J., Schweiger, O., Frenzel, M., Bannehr, L., & Cord, A. F. (2017). Modelling patterns of pollinator species richness and diversity using satellite image texture. Plos ONE, 12(10), 1-17. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0185591

Posted on December 11, 2017 06:44 PM by jswoosh89