Press

ALBANY, NY – A New York State Museum scientist is part of a team that is the first to use tiny radio transmitters to track bees over long distances in a forested habitat, yielding new insight into the role of bees as pollinators in tropical forest ecosystems.

The bee study conducted by Dr. Roland Kays, the Museum’s curator of mammals, and the other team members, was published in the online journal PLoSONE (www.plosone.org) and is available at. http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010738. PLoSONE is an interactive open-access journal for the communication of all peer-reviewed scientific and medical research.

Armed with radio antennas, Kays and the other researchers worked at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama, to track unique signals from 300 milligram transmitters glued to individual orchid bees. Although transmitters were recently used to track bees in open areas, this is the first time it has been used in forested habitats, which offers additional tracking challenges. The research opens the door to future studies of bees in temperate forests, such as those in New York State.

Bees are important pollinators for plants worldwide. Pollination is critical for plants to make fruits and seeds, including domesticated edible fruits, as well as inedible species that are found in most New York State forested habitats. However, little is known about the movement of bees because they are so small and difficult to track.

Researchers, sometimes tracking from a helicopter, discovered that the orchid bees traveled surprisingly long distances, zipping through tropical forest and across rivers and lakes as they moved pollen between rare orchids and other flowers that grow miles apart.
People disrupt plant pollination as they disturb and destroy forests,” said David Roubik, senior staff scientist at STRI and co-author on the paper, “Radio-tracking significantly improves our understanding of bees and the plants they pollinate. Now we can track orchid bees to get at the distances and spatial patterns involved—vital details which have completely eluded researchers in the past.”

The researchers chose 17 iridescent blue-green orchid bees called Exaerete frontalis -- fairly common in the forest. They are larger than New York state honeybees but similar to some of the state’s other large bumble bees. “These bees easily carry a 300 mg radio transmitter glued on their backs,” said Martin Wikelski, co-author of the paper and director of the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology and a STRI research associate. “By following the radio signals, we discovered that male orchid bees spent most of their time in small core areas, but could take off and visit areas farther away. One bee even crossed over the shipping lanes in the Panama Canal, flying at least five kilometres, and returned a few days later.”

In the past, researchers have struggled to determine the distances that bees travel, following individuals marked with paint between baits, or using radar, which doesn’t work when trees are in the way. “Carrying the transmitter might reduce the distance that the bees travel, but even if the flight distances we recorded are the minimum distances that orchid bees fly, they are impressive, long-distance movements,” said Kays, who is also a research associate at STRI. “These data help to explain how orchids these bees visit can be so rare and still get cross- pollinated.”

STRI, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the New York State Museum and the National Geographic Society provided support for the bee study. Other co-authors are affiliated with the University of Arizona, Tucson; Cornell University and EcolSciences, Inc.

In addition to hand tracking bees, Wikelski, Kays and colleagues have set up the Automated Radio Telemetry System at STRI’s research station on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal. The system is available to interested researchers and is capable of tracking up to 200 different animals, 24 hours a day, at any given time.

A unit of the Smithsonian Institution, STRI furthers the understanding of tropical nature and its importance to human welfare, trains students to conduct research in the tropics and promotes conservation by increasing public awareness of the beauty and importance of tropical ecosystems. More information is available at www.stri.org.

The New York State Museum is a program of the New York State Education Department’s Office of Cultural Education. Started in 1836, the Museum has the longest continuously operating state natural history research and collection survey in the United States. Located on Madison Avenue in Albany, it is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. except on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. Admission is free. Further information about programs and events can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.