{"id":4660,"date":"2016-03-08T13:49:30","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T18:49:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=4660"},"modified":"2016-03-08T13:50:41","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T18:50:41","slug":"cutting-away-at-the-mystery-of-leafcutting-bees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/cutting-away-at-the-mystery-of-leafcutting-bees\/","title":{"rendered":"Cutting away at the mystery of leafcutting bees<img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/SMCC-english2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-110\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/SMCC-english2.jpg\" alt=\"SMCC-english2\" width=\"255\" height=\"126\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Leafcutting bees use pieces of various plant leaves to build their nests, however determining which plants they prefer has been a challenge. In the past, researchers had to either observe leafcutting bees visiting a plant or identify pieces of leaf in the nest in to know which plant the bees relied on. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, using DNA barcoding researchers have been able to identify 54 plant species the bees use in their nests. Researchers found all but six of the plants contained antimicrobial properties, which could factor in leaf preference. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The researchers hope this information will aide leafcutting bee conservation. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org\/content\/3\/3\/150623\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Original research\u00a0paper<\/span><\/a>\u00a0published by\u00a0<strong><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Royal Society Open Science<\/span><\/i><\/strong><em>\u00a0<\/em>on <strong>March 1<\/strong><span class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_453723367\"><span class=\"aQJ\"><strong>, 2015<\/strong>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0authors<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<h4><strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">J. Scott MacIvor, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leafcutting bees use pieces of various plant leaves to build their nests, however determining which plants they prefer has been a challenge. In the past, researchers had to either observe leafcutting bees visiting a plant or identify pieces of leaf in the nest in to know which plant the bees relied on. Now, using DNA [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[39,2375,113,1445,917,40,50,1618],"class_list":["post-4660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-animal-behaviour","tag-bees","tag-biology","tag-conservation","tag-evolution","tag-insects","tag-ontario","tag-plants"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4DqbN-1da","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4660"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4661,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4660\/revisions\/4661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}