Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

File List


sponsler_dissertation_final.pdf (13.65 MB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Honey bee landscape ecology: foraging, toxic exposure, and apicultural outcomes

Sponsler, Douglas B
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1479825586271009

Abstract Details

2016, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Entomology.
The unifying thesis of my dissertation is that the biology of a honey bee colony cannot be understood apart from the landscape in which it lives; this influence of landscape applies especially to honey bee foraging biology and toxic exposure, and consequently to apicultural outcomes. In Chapter 1, I present and elaborate this thesis in the context of existing literature and lay out the scope of my dissertation accordingly. In Chapter 2, I describe a study in which I collaborated with volunteer beekeepers to measure the success of honey bee colonies surrounded by different types of landscape in Ohio, USA. The results of this study showed that the most successful colonies tended to be those surrounded by agricultural land as opposed to those in forested or urban landscapes, which was contrary to the prevailing opinion that agricultural landscapes are too dominated by crop monocultures and too contaminated with pesticides to support healthy honey bees. This led me to hypothesize that the relationship between honey bee success and landscape is driven mainly by the availability of certain key floral taxa that, in Ohio, occur most abundantly in the interstices of the agricultural landscape. Chapter 3 further pursues the question of whether honey bees prefer agricultural or urban land use by setting up a foraging choice test between these two landscape types. Using a combination of dance language analysis and pollen identification, I monitored the spatial and taxonomic patterns of honey bee foraging at an apiary located on the interface of urban and agricultural land use. The results indicate a strong and consistent preference for the agricultural landscape, corroborating the results of Chapter 1 with an independent data set and using different lines of evidence. In Chapter 4, I turn my attention to the issue of toxic exposure, constructing a critical review of existing approaches to modeling toxic exposure in honey bees. All existing approaches suffer from serious shortcomings in biological realism, largely due to a failure to approach toxic exposure from a spatially explicit landscape perspective. I demonstrate these shortcomings and then present the key biological mechanisms governing the acquisition of pesticide by foraging bees and the subsequent distribution of pesticide within the nest. Then I explore ways in which these mechanisms might be incorporated into honey bee exposure models and ultimately linked with mechanistic effects models to achieve an integrated field of honey bee toxicology. Chapter 5 applies the modeling principles presented in Chapter 4 to the issue of honey bee exposure to neonicotinoid insecticides during the planting of seed-treated corn. During planting, the neonicotinoid-laden seed treatment material is shed from the seed surface and dispersed in the environment in small particles. This inadvertent release of insecticide has been implicated in honey bee mortality incidents throughout Europe and North America, but the precise route of exposure linking honey bees to the neonicotinoids has remained obscure. I approach the issue from a landscape perspective, using two years of field data on honey bee exposure and mortality during corn planting in central Ohio. By constructing overlapping models of environmental contamination and honey bee foraging, I estimate the degree of exposure potential associated with different components of the landscape, and then use these estimates to test the predictions of several hypothesized routes of exposure. My results indicate that the primary route of exposure is the contamination of bee-attractive flora within corn fields at the time of planting, implying that exposure could be mitigated effectively by the destruction of in-field weeds prior to planting. Chapter 6 tests and extends the findings of Chapter 5 using a simulation model of honey bee exposure to corn seed treatment neonicotinoids. The patterns of exposure generated by this model support the conclusions of Chapter 6 while indicating that the preservation or augmentation of flowering weeds in soybean fields may be equally important in suppressing honey bee exposure.
Reed Johnson (Advisor)
Casey Hoy (Committee Member)
Mary Gardiner (Committee Member)
Karen Goodell (Committee Member)
224 p.
Biology; Ecology; Entomology; Toxicology
pollinator; landscape ecology; pesticide; urban ecology; bee; model; simulation; neonicotinoid; floral resources; pollen; dance language; waggle dance; foraging; toxicology

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Sponsler, D. B. (2016). Honey bee landscape ecology: foraging, toxic exposure, and apicultural outcomes [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1479825586271009

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Sponsler, Douglas. Honey bee landscape ecology: foraging, toxic exposure, and apicultural outcomes . 2016. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1479825586271009.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Sponsler, Douglas. "Honey bee landscape ecology: foraging, toxic exposure, and apicultural outcomes ." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1479825586271009

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1479825586271009
1,947
© 2016, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.