Flow cytometric analysis of bee pollen loads

Understanding the species composition of pollen on pollinators has applications in agriculture, conservation and evolutionary biology, but current identification methods cannot always discriminate taxa at the species level. Kron et al. test the use of flow cytometry to characterize pollen loads from individual bees, using DNA content as a species marker, and find that they are able to quickly measure DNA contents for nuclei from hundreds to thousands of pollen grains per bee. They observe differences in pollen load diversity between bumble-bees and honey-bees and find evidence of between-cytotype pollinator movement in a population of Solidago. This technique provides a new tool to complement other methods for examining pollinator behaviour.