Petals and leaves: quantifying the use of nest building materials by the world's most valuable solitary bee.

Bees used alfalfa leaves but ignored alfalfa petals and cut marigold petals but not marigold leaves. Relative to the abundance of plants in cages, bees used alfalfa leaves, marigold petals, and mallow leaves 4.8, 8.9, and 6.1 times more than expected, respectively, but used mallow petals 1.9 times less than expected (Fig. Keywords: alfalfa leafcutting bee; behavior; Medicago sativa; Megachile rotundata; Megachilidae; reproduction EN alfalfa leafcutting bee behavior Medicago sativa Megachile rotundata Megachilidae reproduction 1 4 4 02/03/22 20220201 NES 220201 The alfalfa leafcutter bee ( I Megachile rotundata i , hereafter simply "leafcutter bee") is a solitary, cavity-nesting bee native to Eurasia, managed as an agricultural pollinator of alfalfa and several other crops in North America since the 1940s (Pitts-Singer and Cane 2011). Here, we describe the petal provisioning behavior and provide the first, to our knowledge, quantitative assessment of behavior related to leafcutter bee nest building material selection involving petals in a controlled environment. [Extracted from the article]