Browsing by Subject "pollination"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Evaluating Landscape and Local Drivers of Pollination in Melittophilous Tallgrass Prairie Forbs: Effects of Surrounding Land-use on Pollen Limitation of Chamaecrista fasciculata & Prescribed Burning on Flowering and Pollination of Dalea purpurea
    (2020-01) Ritchie, Alan
    Tallgrass prairies are one of the most endangered ecosystems in North America. Habitat loss and degradation of remaining prairies threaten both the biodiversity and functioning of these ecosystems. At the landscape scale, loss and fragmentation of existing prairie may limit regional pools of species and abundance of individuals, hampering movement of plants and animals between suitable habitats. At the local scale, degradation of prairies has been exacerbated by loss of native grazers and suppression of fire, the major ecological forces that historically shaped prairie species and communities. While the impacts of these factors on biodiversity in prairies is well-established, little is known about the role of these factors on plant-pollinator interactions, an important ecological process for many prairie forbs. As restoration of prairie habitats is one of the chief means of protecting prairie habitats and biodiversity, evaluating the roles of these factors in mediating ecological processes such as pollination will be critical to their reconstruction. Within this thesis, I explore how two important aspects of habitat restoration management, landscape context and prescribed burning, influence pollination in two common, widespread prairie forbs reliant on insects, namely bees, for pollination. The findings of these studies serve as initial assessments of two under-explored topics with relevance to tallgrass prairie conservation: how placement of a restoration effects recruitment of pollinators and the pollination they provision a habitat, and how animal-mediated pollination influences prescribed burning’s effects on plant reproduction.
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    Pollination of a bee dependent forb in restored prairie: No evidence of pollen limitation in landscapes dominated by row crop agriculture
    (2020-03-02) Ritchie, Alan D; Lane, Ian G; Cariveau, Daniel P; ritch173@umn.edu; Ritchie, Alan; University of Minnesota Bee Lab
    This data set was generated by an experiment wherein we examined how the amount of agriculture surrounding restored tallgrass prairies affects pollination within restorations by deploying sentinel arrays of a native bee-pollinated forb to 8 sites occurring along an agricultural land-use gradient in western Minnesota, USA. We conducted a pollen limitation experiment on our arrays to measure the effect of the landscape surrounding a restoration on pollination, hypothesizing that sites surrounded by more corn and soy, the dominant driver of habitat loss and fragmentation in this system, would experience decreased pollination. We also hand net bees at these sites to test whether agriculture limits bee abundance in these restorations. Very few studies examine both pollen limitation and pollinator abundance in restorations at a landscape scale. Our data set consists of seed set data for individual plants used in our arrays, restoration site information and the proportion agriculture surrounding each restoration, and bee abundance data for each site.
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    Supporting data for "Direct tracking of pollen with quantum dots reveals surprising uniformity in dispersal distance across eleven populations of an annual plant"
    (2023-06-01) Kern, Brooke R; Carley, Lauren N; Moeller, David A; kern0193@umn.edu; Kern, Brooke R
    Pollen movement is a crucial component of dispersal in seed plants. We used quantum dot pollen labeling, a new technique that overcomes past limitations, to evaluate the spatial scale of pollen dispersal and its relationship with conspecific density within eleven populations of Clarkia xantiana ssp. xantiana, a bee pollinated, annual plant. We used experimental arrays in two years to track pollen movement across distances of 5 – 35 m within nine populations and across distances of 10 – 70 m within two additional populations. We tested for distance decay of pollen dispersal and whether conspecific density modulated dispersal distance. We also asked whether dispersal kernels varied among populations across an environmentally complex landscape. We did not observe a decline in labeled pollen receipt with distance over 35 m within eight of nine populations or over 70 m within either of two populations. Pollen receipt increased with conspecific density. Overall, dispersal kernels were consistent across populations.