Busy Bees: Variation in Insect Flower-Visiting Rates across Multiple Plant Species

Figure 2

Eight main insect groups were commonly found on all plants in varying proportions. Daily census data were taken on (a) bramble, ; (b) marjoram, ; (c) ragwort, ; and (d) ivy, . California lilac (e) census was inferred from the pilot rate data (). Averages (f) were taken across all the data. The “Others” category, which was infrequent (<2% of all collected census data), included ants (), mirid bugs (), a lacewing (), and moths (). Overall we took a census on 37 study days across four plants ( for bramble, marjoram, ragwort, and ivy plus for California lilac). Honey bees were the most frequent insect observed (34%), followed by the bumble bees (22%) and hoverflies (12%).

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