[en] For pollinators such as bees, nectar mainly provides carbohydrates and pollen provides proteins, amino acids, and lipids to cover their nutritional needs. Here, to examine differences in pollinator resources, we compared the amino acid profiles and total amino acid contents of pollen from 32 common entomophilous plants in seven families. Our results showed that the amino acid profiles and contents in pollen samples differed according to the plant family and the chromatography method used, i.e., high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) versus ion exchange chromatography (IEX). Pollen from Boraginaceae species had the highest total amino acid contents (361.2-504 μg/mg) whereas pollen from the Malvaceae family had the lowest total amino acid contents (136-243.1 μg/mg). Calculating an amino acid score (AAS) that reflects pollen nutritional quality showed that slightly less than half of the species (19 out of 32) had the maximum nutritional score (AAS = 1) and offered high nutritional quality pollen amino acids for bee pollinators. Though they had high total amino acid contents, the amino acid composition of the studied Boraginaceae species and several members of the Fabaceae was not optimal, as their pollen was deficient in some essential amino acids, resulting in suboptimal amino acid scores (AAS < 0.7). Except for cysteine, the measured amino acid contents were higher using IEX chromatography than using HPLC. IEX chromatography is more robust and is to be preferred over HPLC in future amino acid analyses. Moreover, our observations show that some bee-pollinated species fail to provide complete amino acid resources for their pollinators. Although the implications for pollinator behavior remain to be studied, these deficiencies may force pollinators to forage from different species to obtain all nutritionial requirements.
Disciplines :
Environmental sciences & ecology
Author, co-author :
Jeannerod, Léna ; Earth and Life Institute-Agronomy, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Carlier, Archibald; Earth and Life Institute-Agronomy, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Schatz, Bertrand; CEFE, CNRS, Université de Montpellier, EPHE, IRD, Montpellier, France
Daise, Clothilde; Earth and Life Institute-Agronomy, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Richel, Aurore ; Université de Liège - ULiège > TERRA Research Centre > Smart Technologies for Food and Biobased Products (SMARTECH)
Agnan, Yannick ; Earth and Life Institute-Agronomy, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Baude, Mathilde; Université d' Orléans, USC INRAE 1328, Laboratoire de biologie des ligneux et des grands cultures (LBLGC), Orléans, France ; Sorbonne Université, UPEC, Université Paris Cité, CNRS, IRD, INRAE, Institut d'Ecologie et des Sciences de l'Environnement (iEES-Paris), Paris, France
Jacquemart, Anne-Laure; Earth and Life Institute-Agronomy, UCLouvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Language :
English
Title :
Some bee-pollinated plants provide nutritionally incomplete pollen amino acid resources to their pollinators.
UC Louvain [BE] F.R.S.-FNRS - Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique [BE]
Funding text :
We warmly thank all the volunteers who participated in the pollen collection protocol. All our thanks to Hélène Dailly (MOCA platform, ELI, UClouvain) and Christel Buyens (PEPA lab) for their technical help in pollen chemical analyses, to Laura Moquet, Muriel Quinet and Laurent Somme for sharing their data, to Kathleen Farquharson, Jennifer Mach and Nancy Hofmann for language editing (Plant Editors) and to the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. This work was supported by the Fonds Spéciaux de Recherche, UCLouvain (FSR). UCLouvain FSR
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