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hollowfrog.bsky.social
@hollowfrog.bsky.social
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hcslambert.bsky.social
10/17 Tomato plants came into flower a month sooner than would normally be expected 😮🐝🍅
November 27, 2024 at 10:59 AM
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hcslambert.bsky.social
9/17 To find out, we started tracking the effect of bee damage on flower emergence.
Even with a small number of holes, plants consistently flowered earlier compared to mechanical or undamaged controls.
Fig. 2 Effects of bee damage on flowering time. Flowering time of Solanum lycopersicum and Brassica nigra plants subjected to three treatments: (i) bee damage, (ii) mechanical damage, and (iii) no damage (control). Bars represent least squares means ± confidence intervals. Data were converted to a binary response variable (flowering or not flowering, for each plant on each day), and treatment effects were analyzed using generalized additive models (GAMs), avoiding assumptions of linearity. Interactions between “time since damage” and plant were modeled by smooth functions (table S1). (A) S. lycopersicum: All treatments had highly significant effects on flowering time (bee damage: P < 0.001, estimate = 13.697; mechanical damage: P < 0.001, estimate = 9.131; control: P < 0.001, estimate = −24.279). The interaction between time and plant (smooth term) was also significant: P < 0.001, estimated degrees of freedom (edf) = 0.974, Chi square (Chi.sq) = 39.49. GAM explained 77% of deviance, with coefficient of determination (R2) = 0.794 over 4800 observations. n = 20 plants per treatment. (B) B. nigra: All treatments had highly significant effects on flowering time (bee damage: P < 0.001, estimate = 2.955; mechanical damage: P < 0.001, estimate = 2.601; control: P < 0.001, estimate = −5.747). The interaction between time and plant (smooth term) was also significant: P < 0.001, edf = 0.994, Chi.sq = 181.9. GAM explained 48% of the deviance, with R2 = 0.532 over 1200 observations. n = 10 plants per treatment. On the right is a figure legend showing watercolour illustrations of the three treatments: bee damage, mechanical damage, undamaged control).
November 27, 2024 at 10:59 AM
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hcslambert.bsky.social
8/17 Using their mouthparts and mandibles, workers consistently made holes in multiple plant species. Each hole took a few seconds, but bees didn’t seem to be collecting tissue or getting anything from the leaf.
Why were they doing this?
Photo credit: bit.ly/hannier_pulido
November 27, 2024 at 10:59 AM