Resource availability, competitor abundance and specialization affect competition among bumblebees

The strength of interspecific and intraspecific competition depends on resource availability, competitor abundance, and specialization. Most studies are conducted with single species pairs, constraining our understanding of what drives competition in multispecies communities. We investigated the effect of floral density, competitor abundance, flowering period, and trait specialization (proboscis length) on the potential for interspecific and intraspecific competition between seven common bumblebee species in the Hengduan Mountains of southwest China. We estimated the potential for interspecific and intraspecific competition using resource partitioning indices in plant-bumblebee networks (Müller’s index) over five consecutive years, quantifying changes in floral densities and bumblebee abundance throughout the season. The potential for interspecific competition increased with bumblebee abundance, particularly when floral density was low later in the season. On the other hand, the potenti..., , # Resource availability, competitor abundance and specialization affect competition among bumblebees

This data package contains data from the publication:
Zhong-Ming Ye, Yong-Deng He, Wen Huang, Xiao-Fang Jin, Pedro J. Bergamo, Chun-Feng Yang (2025) Resource availability, competitor abundance and specialization affect competition among bumblebees. Behavioral Ecology.

The package contains one data file (in *.csv format) that was used in the analyses of the above-mentioned publication.

Note: Our study also utilizes the data available from a previously published dataset ([https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25139777.v1](https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.25139777.v1)), as both studies are based on the same dataset.

A detailed description of this data file is given below.

01-potential competition among bumblebees.csv
Dataset for analyzing potential intraspecific and interspecific competition among bumblebees.
The column headings represent:
\"year\" = IDs of the five years that were inc...,