Field observations were recorded in Assiniboine Park, Winnipeg, MB on August 12th, 2024 from 10:00 am – 12:00 pm.
The organism I planned to study were bees in the park and the environmental gradient I observed was a riparian area, unmanaged forest, and managed gardens. I noticed there were a lot less bees in the riparian and forest areas, which made sense because there were much less plants flowering in these areas than there were in the garden at the time. The bees I observed in the unmanaged areas also seemed to be foraging on their own, as opposed to the large groups I observed in the garden. I also noticed a greater diversity of species in the garden than the other areas I observed on this day. Within the garden, I noticed that bees tended to be more attracted to certain colour flowers than others. That made me wonder if it was colour they were attracted to on these specific flowers, or if it is a different attribute of the flowers, or some combination of attributes.
I think that floral colour definitely plays a role in how attractive flowers are to certain bees. I’m sure there are colours that bees can see better than others which can be used as a cue to help guide them to resources to forage. My hypothesis is that flower colour will influence the visitation rate of bees, and I predict that brighter colours such as pinks and yellows will receive more visits from bees than flowers that lack colour (white).
In this experiment, I believe the response variable would be the number of visits from bees, and the explanatory variable would be the colour of the flower. The response variable would be continuous as it is a count measurement, and the explanatory variable would be categorical because they are categorized by colour.
