Foraging behavior by bees in relation to other foraging bees: a meta-analysis and vote count of local enhancement versus local inhibition

Abstract

Foragers at a resource patch can use information provided by visual and olfactory cues from other individuals to identify a high-quality resource. These cues can elicit either local enhancement or local inhibition behaviors. Both of these foraging behaviors are commonly observed among social insects, and particularly bees who frequently encounter other con- or heterospecific bees on flowers while foraging. The conditions that lead foragers to show these behaviors are contextual, and it has been difficult to draw general conclusions about the behaviors of different species without a quantitative analysis. We used a meta-analysis and vote count to synthesize literature on foraging bee behavior to test if bees more often show local enhancement or local inhibition and what circumstances lead to these two different foraging behaviors. Both our meta-analysis and vote count showed that, overall, foraging bees prefer to land on occupied flowers (local enhancement). Based on our vote count, we found that bees were more likely to show local enhancement when they were naïve, when the visual cue was from a conspecific, when experimental flowers were fake, or when the experiment happened in the lab. In comparison, local inhibition was more likely when the visual cue was a heterospecific bee, the experiment used a crushed bee, or when experimental flowers were real. Our meta-analysis provides a foundation to understand broad-scale patterns of local enhancement or local inhibition in bees. Understanding these behaviors is important because they can have contrasting effects on pollination and plant reproduction.