Floral UV Pattern and Abundance Effects on Pollinator Foraging Behavior

Honey bees are vital to human society due to their pollination services but are currently under threat due to various factors. In order to avoid drastic declines in bee populations, it is important to fully understand factors that contribute to pollinator health and efficiency. The focus of this experiment were UV markings, commonly referred to as nectar guides. While various studies have found nectar guides to influence pollinator activity, relatively few experiments have been conducted to see how UV patterns and/or UV coverage of nectar guides affects bee foraging, which is what our experiment attempted to explore. Our hypothesis was that UV coverage has a positive impact on bee foraging activity, but that full UV coverage would lower foraging activity, we also hypothesized that UV pattern would also influence foraging activity and that pollinators will prefer circular patterns. In our experiment we created artificial nectar dispensing flowers with differing UV markings and placed them out in a natural environment and recorded pollinator visitation. We then utilized a two-way ANOVA to determine if there was a statistical correlation between UV abundance and/or UV pattern on pollinator activity. Our results revealed no statistical correlation for either UV coverage (p = .389) nor UV pattern (p = .437) to pollinator activity. While no statistical correlation was found, graphical analysis of the mean between different UV groups revealed a noticeable flower preference was seen for flowers with at least some level of UV compared to no UV and a slight increase in activity for circular patterns compared to radial patterns. This suggests that perhaps UV abundance and pattern plays a minor role in pollinator activity but nothing that is statistically significant. We suggest further follow up research to improve and refine our methods and utilize a greater range of patterns and abundance size with a larger sample size to better understand the role UV pattern and UV coverage has on pollinator foraging activity.