Tracking pollinator movements and resource use in response to environmental stressors at a landscape scale

蜜蜂在粮食生产和促进野生开花植物的繁殖方面发挥着关键作用。在加拿大，大黄蜂在春天出现，经常可以看到它们在农场周围嗡嗡作响，参观水果和蔬菜作物的花朵。像其他蜜蜂一样，大黄蜂似乎也在人类影响的景观中挣扎。重要的食物栖息地和筑巢地的丧失和破碎，更大的农药暴露，寄生虫/病原体和气候变化的风险更高，这些因素都是野生蜜蜂面临的挑战，当这些因素共同作用时，可能会更加有害。虽然大黄蜂可能是加拿大野生蜜蜂中最明显和最好的研究，但我们对它们的基本生态的理解仍然存在很大的差距，我们需要填补这些空白，以便更有效地保护这些传粉者。特别是对大黄蜂蜂王的研究很少，所以我们几乎不知道它们从地下冬眠出来后会走多远去寻找食物和可能的巢穴，在那里它们可以开始自己的殖民地。同样地，对夏末新出现的处女蚁后的散布距离的估计也有很大的差异，因为它们必须找到配偶，然后找到一个安全的地方埋葬自己，以度过冬眠中的寒冷冬天。我们将着手填补这些重要的知识空白，使用一个独特的无线电跟踪阵列，49个接收塔，自动跟踪标记的大黄蜂在真实的时间的运动。我们还将研究大黄蜂工人对蜜蜂有吸引力的大田作物（如蓝莓）的空间觅食模式，并了解这些是如何由农场景观中栖息地的分布和可用性所控制的。我们还将调查暴露于现场实际水平的杀虫剂对无线电标记的蜂王和工蜂行为的潜在亚致死影响。特别是对蚁后来说，即使是正常行为的细微变化，也会对她成功找到巢穴或建立殖民地产生深远的影响。通过让许多秋蜂后将自己埋在飞行围栏中，幸存者将在春天再次出现，将收集对大黄蜂越冬率的可靠估计。跟踪工人之间的遗传相关性也将为我们了解当地人口结构的年度波动提供信息。该计划的一个关键目标是汇集所有这些关于关键生命史转变的新数据，为大黄蜂种群生命周期建立一个生态现实的人口模型。这样一个地面真实的模型将使我们能够更好地了解环境压力通过影响个体蜜蜂的生理和行为来干扰殖民地成功的方式，特别是如果这是女王。全面了解不同熊蜂物种生存和繁荣的关键栖息地要求，使我们对蜜蜂生物学有更广泛的了解，也提高了我们提供有针对性的建议和行动的能力，以保护熊蜂作为必不可少的传粉者。

Bees play a critical role in food production and facilitating reproduction of wild flowering plants. In Canada, bumblebees emerge in spring and are often seen buzzing around farms visiting the blooms of fruit and vegetable crops. Like other bees, bumblebees also seem to be struggling in human influenced landscapes. Loss and fragmentation of important habitat for food and nesting sites, greater pesticide exposure, higher risks from parasites/pathogens and climate change are all challenges for wild bees, and these factors may be more harmful when acting together. Although bumblebees are perhaps the most apparent and best studied of Canada's wild bees, there are still big gaps in our understanding of their basic ecology that we need to fill in order to conserve these pollinators more effectively. Bumblebee queens in particular are poorly studied so we have little idea of how far they travel after emerging from hibernation underground to find food and possible nest sites where they can start their own colony. Similarly estimates of the dispersal distances of newly emerged virgin queens in late summer vary hugely at a time they must find a mate and then a safe place to bury themselves to survive the cold winter in hibernation. We will set out to fill these important knowledge gaps using a unique radio tracking array with 49 receiver towers to automatically follow the movements of tagged bumblebees in real time. We will also examine spatial foraging patterns of bumblebee workers on bee attractive field crops (e.g. blueberry) and see how these are governed by the distribution and availability of habitat in the farmed landscape. We will also investigate the potential sublethal effects of exposure to field realistic levels of pesticides on the behaviour of radio-tagged queens and workers. Particularly for queens even a subtle change from normal behaviour could have a profound effect on her success at finding a nest site or raising a colony. Robust estimates on the rate of bumblebees surviving winter will be collected by allowing many fall queens to bury themselves in flight enclosures into which survivors will emerge again in spring. Tracking the genetic relatedness among workers will also inform our understanding of annual fluctuations in local population structure. A key aim of this program is to bring together all these new data on key life history transitions to build an ecologically realistic demographic model for the bumblebee colony lifecycle. Such a ground-truthed model will allow us to better understand the ways in which environmental stressors perturb colony success by affecting individual bee physiology and behaviour, particularly if this is the queen. Building a complete understanding of the key habitat requirements for different bumblebee species to live and thrive gives us wider insights into bee biology and also increases our ability to provide targeted advice and action to conserve bumblebees as essential pollinators.