Pollinator Diversity and Foraging Specialization

昆虫传粉是许多野生植物和作物繁殖周期中至关重要的一步，而且往往是限制性的一步。因此，了解传粉媒介物种消失的影响，对于健康、正常运作的生态系统的长期持续，以及我们农业企业的安全和生产力，都是一个至关重要的问题。这个项目的重点是传粉者花的保真度，或者在短期内单一传粉者物种与单一植物物种的相互作用有多密切。这种保真度对植物至关重要，因为低保真度的传粉者在一次觅食旅行中会访问许多不同的植物物种，从而在单个植物之间传递错误的花粉，减少它们产生的种子数量。本项目将研究传粉者物种之间的竞争与传粉者花的保真度正相关的假设。如果这一假设是正确的，正如理论和试验数据所表明的那样，传粉媒介物种或种群的减少可能会降低剩余传粉媒介的花卉保真度，从而导致植物繁殖的意外减少。为了验证这一点，我们将在科罗拉多落基山脉的亚高山草甸进行操纵实验，在那里我们有选择地（但暂时和非致命地）从一块土地上移除丰富的传粉媒介物种，并评估操纵前后其他传粉媒介的花的保真度。这些授粉者的清除对植物繁殖的影响也将被初步评估。此外，本项目还研究了在实验室进行的实验觅食试验中的花的保真度，在实验室中可以控制传粉者和植物的多样性和丰度。这项工作可能会对传粉媒介损失对植物繁殖的影响产生影响，特别是在世界各地传粉媒介持续减少的情况下。除了研究结果外，这项工程的更广泛影响包括其对保育的影响；培养博士后研究人员；对落基山生物实验室花粉和蜜蜂参考资料收集的改进；为四年级学生开发授粉课堂模块，该模块将在亚特兰大资源不足的学校实施并广泛传播。

Insect-mediated pollination is a critical, and often limiting, step in the reproductive cycle of many wild plants and crops. Thus, understanding the effects of losing pollinator species is a question of central importance for the long-term persistence of healthy, functioning ecosystems and for the security and productivity of our agricultural enterprise. This project focuses on pollinator floral fidelity, or how closely a single pollinator species interacts with a single plant species over the short term. Such fidelity is of key importance to plants, because pollinators with low fidelity visit many different plant species in a single foraging trip, thus transferring the wrong kind of pollen between individual plants and reducing the number of seeds they produce. This project will investigate the hypothesis that competition between pollinator species is positively related to pollinator floral fidelity. If this hypothesis is true, as is suggested by theory and pilot data, loss of pollinator species or populations could reduce floral fidelity in the pollinators that remain, thereby leading to unanticipated reductions in plant reproduction. To test this, manipulative experiments will be conducted in subalpine meadows in the Colorado Rockies where we selectively - but temporarily and non-lethally - remove an abundant pollinator species from a plot, and assess the floral fidelity of other pollinators both before and after the manipulation. The effects of these pollinator removals on plant reproduction will also be preliminarily assessed. In addition, this project investigates flower fidelity in experimental foraging trials in the lab, where pollinator and plant diversity and abundance can be controlled. This work may have implications for the effects of pollinator losses on plant reproduction, especially given ongoing pollinator declines around the world.Beyond the research results, the broader impacts of this project include its conservation implications; the training of a post-doctoral research fellow; improvements to the pollen and bee reference collections at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory; and development of a pollination classroom module for fourth graders that will be implemented in under-resourced schools in Atlanta and widely disseminated.