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

热带森林是我们星球的肺，也是大多数陆地物种的家园。蜜蜂通过为植物授粉，在维持热带多样性方面发挥着重要作用，植物可以生长出动物食用的种子和果实。热带蜜蜂帮助人类提供香草，鳄梨，腰果，百香果和咖啡，仅举几例。事实上，热带蜜蜂是地球上最重要的生物之一，在作物生产和生物多样性维护中发挥着核心作用。该项目将测试恢复和保护热带蜜蜂的恢复战略。它的特点是一个大的实验和观察蜜蜂授粉植物在许多地点沿着一侧的山脉在哥斯达黎加。研究人员将确定哪些种类的蜜蜂访问哪些种类的花，使他们能够创建一个详细的地图（或“网络”）的相互作用。另一个目标是提高公众对热带蜜蜂及其重要性的认识。通过有针对性的推广，学生和公众将了解本地无刺蜂种提供的许多不同服务。网络理论是一个有用的工具，以实现更好地了解社区和生态系统功能之间的联系。该项目将量化蜜蜂植物网络属性沿着热带海拔梯度，并将这些网络级指标与经济上重要的作物品种的授粉成功率相关联。一个主要目标是量化的脆弱性程度的授粉服务海拔之间的热带生态系统。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，因为植物物种在它们所能支持的相互作用数量上有数量级的差异，在热带地区，恢复和保护工作者有数千种植物物种可供选择。被确定为高度连接的植物物种（基于经验的蜜蜂-植物网络）将被测试其在恢复蜜蜂群落和生态系统功能方面的作用。如果网络理论得到支持，这项研究将提供指导方针，土地管理人员和从业人员的最佳做法，以加快热带森林恢复广泛。在当地，研究结果将用于指导贝尔伯德生物走廊内的恢复工作，国际公认的示范走廊项目。该项目由人口与社区生态计划和刺激竞争研究的既定计划（EPSCoR）共同资助该奖项反映了NSF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进行评估，被认为值得支持的搜索.

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.