Quantitative multi‐locus metabarcoding and waggle dance interpretation reveal honey bee spring foraging patterns in Midwest agroecosystems

• Published in: Molecular ecology Vol. 28; no. 3; pp. 686 - 697
• Main Authors: Richardson, Rodney T., Curtis, Hailey R., Matcham, Emma G., Lin, Chia‐Hua, Suresh, Sreelakshmi, Sponsler, Douglas B., Hearon, Luke E., Johnson, Reed M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.02.2019
• Subjects: Agricultural ecosystems; Apis mellifera; Bees; Bioinformatics; Corn; Cost analysis; Crop fields; Dance; Deoxyribonucleic acid; DNA; Foraging behavior; hierarchical classification; Honey; Land cover; Land use; Loci; molecular palynology; Nucleotide sequence; Nutrition; Palynology; Pollen; pollinator nutrition; quantitative metabarcoding; Soybeans; waggle dance; Waggle Dance; Molecular Palynology; Hierarchical Classification; Quantitative Metabarcoding; Pollinator Nutrition
• ISSN: 0962-1083; 1365-294X
• DOI: 10.1111/mec.14975

We explored the pollen foraging behaviour of honey bee colonies situated in the corn and soybean dominated agroecosystems of central Ohio over a month‐long period using both pollen metabarcoding and waggle dance inference of spatial foraging patterns. For molecular pollen analysis, we developed simple and cost‐effective laboratory and bioinformatics methods. Targeting four plant barcode loci (ITS2, rbcL, trnL and trnH), we implemented metabarcoding library preparation and dual‐indexing protocols designed to minimize amplification biases and index mistagging events. We constructed comprehensive, curated reference databases for hierarchical taxonomic classification of metabarcoding data and used these databases to train the metaxa2 DNA sequence classifier. Comparisons between morphological and molecular palynology provide strong support for the quantitative potential of multi‐locus metabarcoding. Results revealed consistent foraging habits between locations and show clear trends in the phenological progression of honey bee spring foraging in these agricultural areas. Our data suggest that three key taxa, woody Rosaceae such as pome fruits and hawthorns, Salix, and Trifolium provided the majority of pollen nutrition during the study. Spatially, these foraging patterns were associated with a significant preference for forests and tree lines relative to herbaceous land cover and nonflowering crop fields.