Do Bumblebees Forage Optimally, and Does It Matter?

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Abstract
Foraging behavior of bumblebees has been in the past analyzed from two major perspectives. On the one hand, behavioral mechanisms have been studied to learn more about the animal. On the other extreme, the animal has been used incidentally to examine optimal foraging theory (O.F.T.). Major problems have arisen when theory designed to answer evolutionary questions was used to determine proximal mechanisms. While O.F.T. could be highly useful in making predictions to point out useful problems, the bottleneck to our understanding at the present resides in the lack of experiments that test alternative hypotheses. Whether or not a bumblebee worker's foraging behavior is adaptive (enhances fitness), however, or is optimal (maximizes fitness) cannot yet be resolved by observations or experimentation on individual bees. However, calculations can show the potential energy costs and payoffs of alternative potential foraging behaviors. Rapid progress could be made by examining the mechanisms of foraging behavior that act to enhance foraging returns, without worrying about whether or not the behavior is “optimal.”

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