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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Reducing Protected Lands In A Hotspot Of Bee Biodiversity: Bees Of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Joseph S. Wilson, Matt Kelly, Olivia Messinger Carril Dec 2018

Reducing Protected Lands In A Hotspot Of Bee Biodiversity: Bees Of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Joseph S. Wilson, Matt Kelly, Olivia Messinger Carril

Biology Faculty Publications

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is a federally protected area found in central southern Utah. Designated in 1996 by President William J. Clinton, it was recently reduced in size by President Donald J. Trump in a proclamation that turned the one large monument into three smaller ones. A long-term, standardized study of the bees had been conducted from 2000–2003, revealing 660 species. The bee communities of the area are characterized by being spatially heterogeneous; most of the bees occur in isolated areas, with only a few being both abundant and widespread. Here we examine what affect the recent resizing of the …


Systems To Attract And Feed Pollinators In Warm-Season Lawns, Michelle Wisdom Dec 2018

Systems To Attract And Feed Pollinators In Warm-Season Lawns, Michelle Wisdom

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pollinating insects are responsible for the production of many agricultural crops and they require floral resources to fulfill their life-cycle. Ideally, pollinating insects will encounter a diversity of floral resources across their entire season of activity, and those floral resources can include both herbaceous and woody plant species. Managed turfgrass areas have been identified as potential locations for creating pollinator-friendly habitats. In the transition zone, where both warm- and cool-season turfgrass species are present, the persistence of herbaceous plants in warm-season turfgrasses such as bermudagrass (Cynodon spp.) and buffalograss (Buchloe dactyloides), may be affected not only by the competitive nature …


Wild Bees Of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument: Richness, Abundance, And Spatio-Temporal Beta-Diversity, Olivia Messinger Carril, Terry Griswold, James Haefner, Joseph S. Wilson Nov 2018

Wild Bees Of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument: Richness, Abundance, And Spatio-Temporal Beta-Diversity, Olivia Messinger Carril, Terry Griswold, James Haefner, Joseph S. Wilson

All PIRU Publications

Interest in bees has grown dramatically in recent years in light of several studies that have reported widespread declines in bees and other pollinators. Investigating declines in wild bees can be difficult, however, due to the lack of faunal surveys that provide baseline data of bee richness and diversity. Protected lands such as national monuments and national parks can provide unique opportunities to learn about and monitor bee populations dynamics in a natural setting because the opportunity for large-scale changes to the landscape are reduced compared to unprotected lands. Here we report on a 4-year study of bees in Grand …


Survey Of The Critically Endangered Rusty Patched Bumble Bee (Bombus Affinis) At Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, (Usda-Fs) Ill., Anne Hughes Jul 2018

Survey Of The Critically Endangered Rusty Patched Bumble Bee (Bombus Affinis) At Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, (Usda-Fs) Ill., Anne Hughes

Pence-Boyce STEM Student Scholarship

Bumble bees (Bombus spp.) are important pollinators of many plants around the world. Recent declines in populations and range(s) of Bombus spp. are attributed to habitat loss, pesticide use and invasive pathogens. Four species have undergone notable declines in Illinois, with one, the rusty patched bumble bee (B. affinis), recently being listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Prairie restoration over the past 20 years at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, a 20,000 acre preserve near Wilmington, IL, has resulted in much florally rich prairie habitat, yet no comprehensive survey for B. affinis has been conducted, despite known populations in …


Population Genetics And Bumble Bee Conservation: Saving Species By Thinking Small, Cady Greenslit May 2018

Population Genetics And Bumble Bee Conservation: Saving Species By Thinking Small, Cady Greenslit

Lawrence University Honors Projects

Pollinators have experienced a severe decline over the last few decades, and this includes bumble bee populations (g. Bombus). Bumble bees are important native pollinators, and here I investigate the health of local populations with molecular tools. The field of conservation genetics has created useful methodology for investigating the health and informing management strategies of threatened populations. This work investigates and describes the applications of population genetics, which uses span across the board. These applications are then brought back into the context of bumble bee conservation, and how they fit into the experimental plan I originally designed. I designed …


Insect Visitors Of Cirsium Pitcheri, A Threatened And Endemic Dune Species, In Relation To Annual Weather Variation, Jordan M. Marshall Jan 2018

Insect Visitors Of Cirsium Pitcheri, A Threatened And Endemic Dune Species, In Relation To Annual Weather Variation, Jordan M. Marshall

The Great Lakes Entomologist

Cirsium pitcheri (Torr. ex Eaton) Torr. & A. Gray (Pitcher’s thistle) is a threatened herbaceous plant endemic to sand dune ecosystems along Lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior in North America. Habitat for this plant is limited to active dunes with moving sand. I observed floral visitors of C. pitcheri in Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and Indiana Dunes State Park, and calculated frequency and density of visitor families. Additionally, I tested for relationships between visitor counts and previous growing season mean temperature and precipitation. Formicidae, Anthomyiidae, and Cecidomyiidae were the most frequent families. However, Apidae was the only family correlated with …