Are there differences in insect flight behaviour among different flower species?
We were only able to capture film of social wasps flying between ivy flowers and of Myathropa flying on knapweed flowers. Syrphus flew between ivy, devil’s bit scabious and knapweed: a one-way ANOVA showed no differences in the speeds individuals flew between these three flower species (F2,24=1.677; P=0.210) or the routes they took between them (F2,24=0.262; P=0.771). The other hoverflies flew on just knapweed and devils bit scabious. For Sericomyia a two-sample t-test (equal variances; 10 flights on each flower species) showed there was no difference in the speed they flew between flowers of the two genera (t18=0.508; P=0.612) or the routes they took (t18=0.214; P=0.833). For Helophilus (unequal variances four flights on knapweed; 21 flights on devil’s bit scabious) there was no difference in the routes they took (t23=0.862; P=0.397) but there was a difference in the speeds they flew between the flowers of the two genera (t23=5.026; P=0.005); they flew slower between knapweed flowers,
