Artificial flowers as a tool for investigating multimodal flower choice in wild insects
Data files
Nov 14, 2023 version files 131.78 KB
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art_flowers_metadata.xlsx
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artificial_flower_data.csv
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multinom_visitation_metadata.xlsx
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multinom_visitation.csv
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README.md
Abstract
Flowers come in a variety of colours, shapes, sizes, and odours. Flowers also differ in the quality and quantity of nutritional rewards they provide to entice potential pollinators to visit. Given this diversity, generalist flower-visiting insects face the considerable challenge of deciding which flowers to feed on and which to ignore.
Working with real flowers poses logistical challenges due to correlations between flower traits, maintenance costs, and uncontrolled variables. Here we overcome this challenge by designing multi-modal artificial flowers that varied in visual, olfactory, and reward attributes. We used artificial flowers to investigate the impact of seven floral attributes (three visual cues, two olfactory cues, and two rewarding attributes) on flower visitation and species richness. We investigated how flower attributes influenced two phases of the decision-making process: the decision to land on a flower, and the decision to feed on a flower.
Artificial flowers attracted 890 individual insects representing 15 morphospecies spanning seven arthropod orders. Honeybees were the most common visitors accounting for 46% of visitors. Higher visitation rates were driven by the presence of nectar, the presence of linalool, flower shape, and flower colour, and was negatively impacted by the presence of citral. Species richness was driven by the presence of nectar, the presence of linalool, and flower colour. For hymenopterans, the probability of landing the artificial flowers was influenced by the presence of nectar or pollen, shape, and the presence of citral and/or linalool. The probability of feeding increased when flowers contained nectar. For dipterans, the probability of landing on artificial flowers increased when the flower was yellow and contained linalool. The probability of feeding increased when flowers contained pollen, nectar, and linalool.
Our results demonstrate the multi-attribute nature of flower preferences and highlight the usefulness of artificial flowers as tools for studying flower visitation in wild insects.
README: Artificial flowers as a tool for investigating multimodal flower choice in wild insects
https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.jsxksn0h5
This dataset includes:
- A CSV containing data on visitation rates to artificial flowers "artificial_flower_data.csv" and corresponding metadata "art_flowers_metadata.csv"
- A CSV containing data on insect approaches, landing and feeding on artificial flowers "multinom_visitation.csv" and corresponding metadata "multinom_visitation_metadata.csv"
- The file "artificial_flower_2023_dryad_v2" contains an R markdown file with the statistical analyses performed in the manuscript
Description of the data and file structure
Data were collected by observing insect interactions with multiattribute artificial flowers. The "artificial_flower_data.csv" contains observations of insects landing and feeding on flowers. Each row is an observation. The following data are included:
variable | description |
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date | date experiment conducted |
pollen | Feedbee substitute present (y/n) |
nectar | n= not present,y= present |
shape | daisy, daisy_vert, disc, disc_vert |
colour | yellow, blue |
size | large, small |
linalool | n= not present,y= present |
citral | n= not present,y= present |
site | site id number |
insect_abundance | number of insects that approached, landed or fed |
species_richness | total number of spcies that approached, landed fed |
honey_bee | number of Apis |
tetragonula | Num Tcarb |
no_hb | Abundance excluding honeybees |
hoverfly | Syrphids |
feed | The number of insects that fed on flowers |
land | The number that landed, but did not feed |
approach | The number of insects that approached, but did not land or feed |
feed_land | The number of insects that fed and/or landed |
spec_rich_land | Number of taxa that landed or fed |
observer | Who recorded info |
treatment_real | Unique flower identifier |
food_cat | nn= no pollen, no nectar, ny= no pollen, has nectar, yn =has pollen, no nectar, nn= no pollen, no nectar |
smell_cat | nn= no odours, yy = linalool and citral, yn= linaloom, no citral, ny = no libalool, has citral |
The file "multinom_visitation.csv" contains data on insect interactions with artificial flowers where the interactions are defined as 'approach', 'land', or 'feed'. It contains the following data:
variable | description |
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date | date experiment conducted |
pollen | Feedbee substitute present (y/n) |
nectar | n= not present,y= present |
shape | daisy, daisy_vert, disc, disc_vert |
colour | yellow, blue |
size | large, small |
linalool | n= not present,y= present |
citral | n= not present,y= present |
insect | initial categorisation from datasheets |
response | Described behaviour of the insect toward the flower as either Landing, Feeding or Approach. See manuscript for precise definition |
observer | Initials of the observer (f or k) |
treatmen_real | Unique flower identifier |
num | ignore-used to make id_numbers |
id_num | unique id_number for each observation; was calculated for an IRT analysis that we ended up not using |
morphoptaxa | morphotaxa |
order | Arthropod order the organism belongs to |
Methods
We developed and tested artificial flowers aimed at attracting wild, free-flying insects. Based on preliminary literature searches and our experience, we tested the effect of seven flower attributes: the presence of nectar, the presence of pollen, the presence of citral, the presence of linalool, flower colour, flower shape, and flower size. Each attribute had two levels, with the exception of ‘flower shape’ which had 4 levels. For nectar, pollen, citral, and linalool, the levels were simply ‘presence’ or ‘absence’. For shape, the levels were daisy, daisy clustered, simple disc, and simple clustered. For colour, the levels were ‘yellow’ or ‘blue.’ For ‘display size’, the levels were ‘small’ (5 cm across) and ‘large’ (10 cm across). Investigating every combination of our seven attributes in a full factorial design was logistically infeasible as it would have required 256 unique flower treatments. To overcome this challenge, we used a fractional factorial experimental design to reduce the number of treatments to a feasible subset of 16 unique flower designs
We deployed patches of artificial flowers around The University of Sydney Camperdown campus in New South Wales, Australia (33.8886°S, 151.1873°E) on the unceded land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, between 10:00 and 11:00 am during Australian autumn (March–May) and early winter (June – August) 2021. We tested artificial flowers on days forecast to be sunny with no rain. Maximum temperatures on study days ranged from 18 to 31˚C. Experiments ran between 10:00 and 16:00 hours.
Insects were identified to morphospecies on the wing.