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Time‐series models to quantify short‐term effects of meteorological conditions on bumblebee forager activity in agricultural landscapes
Author(s) -
Sanderson Roy A.,
Goffe Louis A.,
Leifert Carlo
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
agricultural and forest entomology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.755
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1461-9563
pISSN - 1461-9555
DOI - 10.1111/afe.12102
Subject(s) - foraging , bumblebee , context (archaeology) , climate change , bombus terrestris , term (time) , time series , environmental science , wind speed , ecology , pollinator , meteorology , geography , climatology , biology , pollination , statistics , mathematics , pollen , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics , geology
The decline of bumblebees in E urope has been linked primarily to agricultural intensification, although climate change also has the potential to disrupt plant–pollinator interactions, partly through an increased frequency of extreme short‐term weather events. There have been few attempts to use time‐series models to determine meteorological variables affecting forager activity at hourly time periods over several months. Time‐series models require large datasets to be reliable. We describe the use of infrared detectors at nest entrances to record forager exits/returns from 36 captive colonies of B ombus terrestris audax on a mixed farm in northern E ngland, recording over a 78‐day period. Over 1.73 million individual records of forager activity were obtained. These were aggregated into 1872 hourly blocks and analyzed with autoregressive time‐series models that used nine meteorological factors as explanatory variables. Forager activity was positively linked to air temperature and solar elevation, and negatively associated with rainfall, humidity and wind‐speed. The effects of increased variability in meteorological conditions are considered in the context of these results. The time‐series models that we describe will be useful in future analyses of the large datasets of foraging behaviour that are becoming available through new technologies such as radio‐frequency identification and video tracking.