什么？雌蜂和雄峰对花的偏爱性还不同？

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With flower preferences, bees have a big gap between the sexes

Rutgers University

For scores of wild bee species, females and males visit very different flowers for food—a discovery that could be important for conservation efforts, according to Rutgers-led research. Indeed, the diets of female and male bees of the same species could be as different as the diets of different bee species, according to a study in the journal PLOS ONE.  Female bees build, maintain, collect food for and defend nests, while male bees primarily seek mates. Both sexes drink floral nectar for food, but only females collect pollen that serves as food for young bees, so they forage at greater rates than males. From the flowers' standpoint, both female and male bees are important pollinators—though female bees are more prolific because they spend more time foraging at flowers.

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根据罗格斯领导的一项研究，对于许多野生蜜蜂物种来说，雌蜂和雄蜂会到非常不同的花上觅食——这一发现可能对蜜蜂物种保护工作很重要。事实上，根据《Plos one》杂志上的一项研究，同一物种的雌蜂和雄蜂的饮食差异可能与不同蜜蜂物种的饮食差异一样大。雌蜂负责建造、维护、收集食物和保卫巢穴，而雄蜂主要负责寻找伴侣。雌蜂和雄峰都以花蜜为食物，但只有雌性收集花粉作为幼蜂的食物，所以雌蜂的觅食率高于雄性。从花的角度来看，雌蜂和雄蜂都是重要的传粉者，尽管雌蜂更多产，因为它们花更多的时间在花上觅食。

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