Sugar high for bees
A field of flowers may seem innocuous — but for the birds and bees that depend on it for sustenance, that floral landscape can be a battlefield mined with predators and competitors. The more efficient a pollinator is in feeding, the less chance it has of becoming food itself. Now mathematicians at MIT have found that efficient feeding depends on how sugary a flower’s nectar is, and whether an animal dips or sucks the nectar out. The researchers found that animals such as bees, which probe with their tongues, are “viscous dippers,” and are most efficient when feeding on more sugary, or viscous, nectar. Suction feeders, such as birds and butterflies that draw nectar up through tubes, do their best when sucking up thinner, less sugary nectar. The difference, says John Bush, a professor of applied mathematics, may point to a co-evolutionary process between flowers and their pollinators. “Do the...