[Pollinator] Tiny radio transmitters track flight of tropical orchid bees

[Scott Black]

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<http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/observations>Observations 
-  May 27, 2010

Tiny radio transmitters track flight of tropical orchid bees

<http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=tiny-radio-transmitters-track-fligh-2010-05-27>http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=tiny-radio-transmitters-track-fligh-2010-05-27 


By Katherine Harmon

Rare 
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=virus-ravages-orchids>tropical 
orchids can be few and far between in the wild, 
often separated by spotty landscape and 
human-made obstacles. But powerful tropical 
orchid 
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/report.cfm?id=buzz-on-bees>bees 
do the leg­or wing­work, flying great distances 
to pollinate isolated flowers and keep the flora gene pool fresh.

Just how far and where exactly these bees fly, 
however, has remained relatively obscure to 
researchers. Some studies had tracked bees by 
marking them and using bait 
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=sneaky-orchid-drives-wasps-wild-09-08-06>flowers 
to lure them in for counting or by scouting out 
specific flowers that bees appeared to return to. 
But these results have created only a rough 
sketch of the range and routes of these bees.

A group of researchers now has acquired far more 
specific data, attaching tiny, 300-milligram 
radio transmitters to the backs of male orchid 
bees (Exaerete frontalis) to track their movements.

The bees clocked in at an average of 9.5 meters 
per minute, usually logging more than three hours 
of air time a flight. The longest flight recorded 
was nearly two kilometers, and one intrepid bee 
soared over the 
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-plan-for-panama>Panama 
Canal, eventually ending up some five kilometers 
away before returning days later closer to where it had been caught.

"The data confirm that male orchid bees 
habitually travel a distance that can help 
connect widely dispersed orchids or other plants 
which they alone pollinate, and that produce a 
few 
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=floral-footprint>short-lived 
flowers daily," the researchers concluded in 
<http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0010738>their 
study, published online May 26 in the journal PLoS ONE.

Burdening 612-milligram bees with radio 
transmitters might sound excessive, but the 
researchers maintained that the bees can "easily 
carry" them, Martin Wikelski, director of the Max 
Plank Institute for Ornithology, said in a 
prepared statement. And another member of the 
team, Roland Kays, curator of mammals at the New 
York State Museum, explained in a statement that 
"carrying the transmitter could reduce the 
distance that the bees travel, but even if the 
flight distances we recorded are the minimum 
distances these orchid 
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=solving-the-mystery-of%E2%80%94i>bees 
can fly, they are impressive, long-distance 
movements." Of the 14 bees outfitted with 
transmitters, five were tracked through the full 
10-day duration of the transmitter battery life, 
four were found dead and the others were lost.

"Radio tracking significantly improves our 
understanding of bees and the plants they 
pollinate," David Roubik, a senior scientist at 
the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, said 
in a prepared statement. "Now we can track orchid 
bees to get the distances and spatial patterns 
involved­vital details which have completely eluded researchers in the past."

"Given the escalating rate of human interference, 
and the potential for 
<http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=saving-the-honeybee>deterioration 
of pollination services, it is critical that we 
start to understand the complexities of these 
relationships," the authors noted in their paper. 
The new data from this study and others could 
help inform conservation studies as well as work 
in agriculture and general biology. At the very 
least, these results "help to explain how orchids 
these bees pollinate can be so rare," Kays said.



*************************
Scott Hoffman Black
Ecologist/Entomologist
Executive Director
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
4828 SE Hawthorne
Portland, OR 97215
Direct line (503) 449-3792
sblack at xerces.org

The Xerces Society is an international, nonprofit 
organization that protects wildlife through the 
conservation of invertebrates and their habitat.

To join the Society, make a contribution, or read about our work,
please visit <http://www.xerces.org/>www.xerces.org.


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