Pollinator traits and competitive context shape dynamic foraging behavior in bee communities

Abstract Interspecific interactions (e.g. competition) can dynamically shape individual and species-level resource use within communities. Understanding how interspecific competition between pollinators species shapes resource use is of particular interest because pollinator foraging behavior (“floral fidelity”) is directly linked to plant reproductive function through the movement of conspecific pollen. Through targeted species removals, this study aims to gain a predictive understanding of how interspecific competition can influence pollinator foraging behavior. We explore how traits—specifically pollinator tongue length, known to dictate pollinator resource partitioning—influence behavioral plasticity and drive dynamic interspecific interactions. Our results demonstrate that bee species vary in their floral fidelity and that tongue length explains a large part of this variation. Bees with shorter tongues move between plant species (floral infidelity) more often than bees with longer tongues. We did not find significant variation in the response of bee species to a reduction in interspecific competition, but rather saw a guild-wide reduction in floral fidelity in response to the removal of the dominant bee species Finally, our results suggest that tongue length of the most abundant bee species, a site-level attribute, explains much of the site-to-site variation in pollinator foraging behavior. In particular, we found that as the tongue length of the most abundant bee in the site increases, the site level foraging fidelity decreases. With global pollinator populations on the decline, novel interactions between plants and pollinators are likely to occur. Exploring how the competitive landscape shapes foraging plasticity will help us generalize to other plant pollinator systems and begin to better predict the functional implications of competitive interactions.