Data from: Forests do not limit bumble bee foraging movements in a montane meadow complex

Understanding the roles of habitat fragmentation and resource availability
in shaping animal movement are integral for promoting species persistence
and conservation. For insects like bumble bees, their movement patterns
affect the survival and reproductive potential of their colonies as well
as the pollen flow of plant species. However, our understanding of their
mobility or the impact of putative barriers in natural environments is
limited due to the technical difficulties of studying wild populations. We
used genetic mark-recapture to estimate the foraging distance, resource
use, and site connectivity of two bumble bee species in a montane meadow
complex composed of open meadows within a matrix of forest. There was no
evidence that forests or changes in landcover function as barriers to
fine-scale movement for either species. We found substantially greater
colony-specific foraging distances for Bombus vosnesenskii (maximum: 1867
m) compared to B. bifarius (maximum: 362 m). Despite this difference in
absolute range, we detected both species across putative forest barriers
at frequencies expected by uninhibited movement. Siblings separated by
greater distances were more likely to be foraging on different floral
species, potentially suggesting a resource-based motivation for movement.
These results suggest that bumble bee foraging patterns are influenced by
species-specific differences in movement capacity, with little influence
of matrix composition between resource patches. They also support the
perspective that habitat conservation for bumble bees should prioritize
providing abundant and diverse patches of resources within
species-specific movement radii with less emphasis on matrix composition.