Closely related pollen generalist bees differ in their ability to develop on the same pollen diet: evidence for physiological adaptations to digest pollen

Summary 1.  Given the enormous quantitative pollen requirements of bees and their high efficiency in pollen removal, flowers should balance the need to attract bees for pollination on the one hand and to restrict pollen loss to bees on the other hand. Although various morphological flower traits have been identified that reduce excessive pollen losses to bees, the question of whether pollen might also be chemically protected remains largely unexplored. 2.  In this study we compared the larval performance of the two very closely related and highly pollen generalist solitary bee species Osmia bicornis and Osmia cornuta on four different pollen diets. 3.  Despite their very large pollen diet breadth, the two bee species showed striking differences in their ability to develop on pollen of the same plant species. Osmia bicornis developed well on Ranunculus pollen but failed to do so on Echium pollen, whereas the reverse held true for O. cornuta with the exception of two larvae grown on Ranunculus pollen that developed into dwarfish adults. Both bee species performed well on Sinapis pollen, while neither of the two species managed to develop on Tanacetum pollen. 4.  The observed differences in larval survival of these two Osmia species when reared on the same pollen diet as well as their failure to develop on Tanacetum pollen clearly demonstrate that bees require physiological adaptations to cope with the unfavourable chemical properties of certain pollen. 5.  Our results show a remarkable analogy of bee–flower relationships with herbivore–plant interactions and possibly indicate that the pollen of certain plant taxa might be chemically protected.