How Landscape Filters Local Abundance: A Test of the Body Size-Foraging Range Hypothesis in Bumble Bees

Retzlaff, Jennifer Leigh

How Landscape Filters Local Abundance: A Test of the Body Size-Foraging Range Hypothesis in Bumble Bees

dc.contributor.advisor	Galpern, Paul
dc.contributor.advisor	Cartar, Ralph Victor
dc.contributor.author	Retzlaff, Jennifer Leigh
dc.contributor.committeemember	Bender, Darren J.
dc.contributor.committeemember	Flanagan, Kyla M.
dc.contributor.committeemember	Pavelka, Mary McDonald
dc.date	2018-06
dc.date.accessioned	2018-03-15T19:51:13Z
dc.date.available	2018-03-15T19:51:13Z
dc.date.issued	2018-03-09
dc.description.abstract	For central place foragers, foraging range increases with body size. This is true for eusocial pollinators such as bumble bees, for whom body size dictates the maximum distance to which foragers can travel from their nest. Body size should therefore influence the size of landscape over which floral resources are accessible, and indirectly affect local abundance. Given this dispersal constraint, landscape should be an environmental filter for bees based on their body size, resulting in a size-based distribution of abundances in the local bee community reflecting the distance-based availability of resources. In this way, the abundance of bumble bees should reflect landscape composition. I found that the abundance of queens in Southern Alberta was related to an interaction between the amount of semi-natural land cover (a measure of foraging resources for bees) at two spatial scales: near the nest (local; 0 – 500 m) and further afield (broad; 500 – 2000 m). Small queens were more abundant when local availability of semi-natural land was moderate or high, and broad availability of semi-natural land was at low or moderate. The converse was not true: large queens were not more abundant when local resources were poor, and broad resources high. Worker abundance increased with local semi-natural land cover, but surprisingly showed no sign of this relationship being mediated by body size, suggesting that landscape composition influences the body size composition of bumble bee communities primarily during the nest establishment phase by queens. I conclude that the body size-foraging range hypothesis is generally unsupported in my system, but the hypothesis received partial support in the case of small-bodied queen bumble bees being more abundant when amount of local semi-natural habitat was high.	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Retzlaff, J. L. (2018). How Landscape Filters Local Abundance: A Test of the Body Size-Foraging Range Hypothesis in Bumble Bees (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/30731	en_US
dc.identifier.doi	http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/30731
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/1880/106435
dc.language.iso	eng
dc.publisher.faculty	Graduate Studies
dc.publisher.faculty	Science
dc.publisher.institution	University of Calgary	en
dc.publisher.place	Calgary	en
dc.rights	University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.
dc.subject	Bumble bee
dc.subject	Functional ecology
dc.subject	Body size
dc.subject	Landscape Filtering
dc.subject.classification	Education--Sciences	en_US
dc.subject.classification	Ecology	en_US
dc.subject.classification	Entomology	en_US
dc.title	How Landscape Filters Local Abundance: A Test of the Body Size-Foraging Range Hypothesis in Bumble Bees
dc.type	master thesis
thesis.degree.discipline	Biological Sciences
thesis.degree.grantor	University of Calgary
thesis.degree.name	Master of Science (MSc)
ucalgary.item.requestcopy	true
ucalgary.thesis.checklist	I confirm that I have submitted all of the required forms to Faculty of Graduate Studies.	en_US