CAREER: Advancing Scientific Knowledge of Tropical Mutualistic Network Science and Public Knowledge of Tropical Bee Importance

职业：推进热带互惠网络科学的科学知识和热带蜜蜂重要性的公众知识

• 批准号: 2142938
• 负责人: Valerie Peters
• 金额: $ 71.26万
• 依托单位: Eastern Kentucky University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-05-15 至 2027-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2142938&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Advancing; Scientific; Knowledge; Tropical

Tropical forests are the lungs of our planet and home to most species that live on land. Bees play an important role in maintaining tropical diversity by pollinating plants, which can then grow seeds and fruits that animals eat. Tropical bees help provide humans with vanilla, avocados, cashews, passion fruit and coffee, to name a few. In fact, tropical bees are one of the most essential organisms on the planet for their central role in crop production and biodiversity maintenance. This project will test a restoration strategy to recover and protect tropical bees. It features a big experiment and observations of bees pollinating plants at many sites along the side of a mountain range in Costa Rica. Researchers will determine which species of bees visit which species of flowers, allowing them to create a detailed map (or “network”) of interactions. Another goal is to raise public awareness of tropical bees and their importance. Through targeted outreach, students and the public will learn about the many different services provided by native species of stingless bees. Network theory is a useful tool to achieve a greater understanding of the connections between communities and ecosystem function. This project will quantify bee-plant network properties along a tropical elevational gradient and relate those network-level metrics to pollination success in an economically important crop species. A primary goal is to quantify the degree of vulnerability of pollination services among elevations in tropical ecosystems. Network theory will be used to select plant species for use in a restoration experiment. This is important because plant species differ by orders of magnitude in the number of interactions they can support and in the tropics, restoration and conservation practitioners have thousands of plant species to choose among. Plant species determined to be highly connected (based on empirical bee-plant networks) will be tested for their role in restoring bee communities and ecosystem function. If network theory is supported, this study will provide guidelines to land managers and practitioners on best practices to accelerate tropical forest restoration broadly. Locally, the results will be used to inform restoration within the Bellbird Biological Corridor, an internationally recognized model corridor project.This project is jointly funded by the Population and Community Ecology program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

热带森林是地球的肺，是大多数陆地生物的家园。蜜蜂通过为植物授粉，在维持热带生物多样性方面发挥着重要作用，这些植物可以生长出供动物食用的种子和果实。热带蜜蜂为人类提供了香草、牛油果、腰果、百香果和咖啡等等。事实上，热带蜜蜂是地球上最重要的生物之一，因为它们在作物生产和生物多样性维持中发挥着核心作用。该项目将测试恢复和保护热带蜜蜂的恢复策略。它的特点是一个大型实验和观察蜜蜂在哥斯达黎加山脉一侧的许多地点为植物授粉。研究人员将确定哪种蜜蜂会访问哪种花朵，从而绘制出详细的互动地图（或“网络”）。另一个目标是提高公众对热带蜜蜂及其重要性的认识。通过有针对性的外展活动，学生和公众将了解本地无刺蜜蜂提供的许多不同服务。网络理论是一个有用的工具，可以更好地理解群落和生态系统功能之间的联系。该项目将量化沿热带海拔梯度的蜜蜂-植物网络特性，并将这些网络水平指标与经济上重要的作物物种的授粉成功联系起来。一个主要目标是量化热带生态系统中不同海拔授粉服务的脆弱性程度。网络理论将用于选择植物物种用于恢复实验。这一点很重要，因为植物物种在相互作用的数量上存在数量级的差异，而在热带地区，恢复和保护从业者有数千种植物可供选择。被确定为高度连接的植物物种（基于经验蜜蜂-植物网络）将被测试其在恢复蜜蜂群落和生态系统功能中的作用。如果网络理论得到支持，这项研究将为土地管理者和实践者提供关于广泛加速热带森林恢复的最佳实践的指导方针。在当地，研究结果将用于Bellbird生物走廊的修复，这是一个国际公认的模范走廊项目。该项目由人口与社区生态计划和促进竞争研究的既定计划（EPSCoR）共同资助。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。