DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Assessing multi-scale drivers of pollinator assembly and plant-pollinator network architecture in the context of prairie restoration

传粉者是维持地球生物多样性的关键，因为近90%的开花植物依赖动物传粉者繁殖。传粉者也是全球农业的重要组成部分，昆虫的授粉服务每年价值数千亿美元。鉴于它们的重要性，我们必须了解昆虫传粉者群落如何在复杂的景观中与植物相互作用，这些景观往往被人类严重改变。研究人员最近开始使用“网络”方法来研究整个生态群落中的植物-传粉者相互作用。一个植物-传粉者网络可以被看作是一个“网络”的传粉者和植物之间的所有相互作用在一个给定的地方。例如，通过建立和评估植物-传粉者网络，研究人员可以评估特定地点的传粉在面临干扰或物种损失时是否会保持稳定。考虑到人类引起的压力因素，如栖息地丧失和农药使用，这一点尤其重要，因为这些因素正在导致全世界传粉媒介的减少。这项研究将使用一种新的遗传方法来确定在十个堪萨斯大草原上哪些植物物种被哪些蜜蜂物种授粉。数据将用于构建植物传粉网络，以评估干扰和传粉物种的损失对人类改造景观的授粉服务的潜在影响。 作为该项目的一部分，研究小组将为渴望成为第一代大学毕业生的初中和高中学生举办传粉者生态学讲习班。 植物-传粉者网络通常通过观察昆虫落在花上（即，“访问网络”）。很少有研究人员评估这些昆虫花间花粉的存在和物种身份;基于花粉形态这样做特别耗时。在这个项目中，研究人员将使用元条形码来识别在十个研究地点收集的本地蜜蜂携带的花粉。由此产生的花粉运输网络的几个结构特性将进行比较，仅基于访问数据的网络的属性。研究人员预测：A）花粉运输网络将表现出更大的网络级专业化比访问网络，和B）花粉运输网络将比访问网络嵌套少，表明植物-传粉者的相互作用可能更容易受到物种损失比访问数据，单独，会建议。

Pollinators are key to the maintenance of Earth's biodiversity because almost 90% of flowering plants rely on animal pollinators to reproduce. Pollinators are also a vital component of global agriculture, and pollination services by insects are worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Given their importance, it is critical that we develop an understanding of how insect pollinator communities interact with plants across complex landscapes that are often heavily modified by humans. Researchers have recently begun using "network" approaches to study plant-pollinator interactions across entire ecological communities. A plant-pollinator network can be visualized as a "web" of all interactions between pollinators and plants at a given place. By building and evaluating plant-pollinator networks, researchers can, for example, assess whether pollination at a given site will remain stable in the face of disturbance or loss of species. This is especially relevant, considering that human-induced stressors, such as habitat loss and pesticide use, are causing pollinator declines worldwide. This research will use a new genetic approach to determine which plant species are pollinated by which bee species in ten Kansas prairies. Data will be used to construct plant-pollinator networks to assess the potential effect of disturbance and loss of pollinator species on pollination services across human-modified landscapes. As part of this project, the research team will conduct pollinator ecology workshops for middle- and high school students aspiring to be first-generation college graduates. Plant-pollinator networks are typically constructed from observations of insects landing on flowers (i.e., "visitation networks"). Few researchers have evaluated these insects for the presence and species identities of pollen carried between flowers; doing so based on pollen morphology is especially time-consuming. In this project, investigators will use metabarcoding to identify pollen carried by native bees collected across ten study sites. Several structural properties of the resulting pollen transport networks will be compared to the properties of networks based on visitation data alone. Investigators predict that: A) pollen transport networks will exhibit greater network-level specialization than visitation networks, and B) pollen transport networks will be less nested than visitation networks, indicating that plant-pollinator interactions could be more susceptible to species loss than the visitation data, alone, would suggest.