Our team of students and mentors in 2021 was set up to answer the following questions:
1. How will increasing temperatures affect pollinator foraging?
2. How do air pollutants affect floral scents and pollinator foraging behavior?
3. How will heat stress on pollinator-dependent crops impact food supply in cities where the largest concentrations of human populations are found?
To investigate question 1, Maren Appert and Abigail Jiménez from California (USA), Alonso Delgado from Texas (USA), and Andrés Herrera and Ruben Martín from Cajicá (Colombia) collected foraging data of pollinators along with the varying temperatures of the day and set up bioassays to quantify the critical thermal maxima (CTmax) of pollinators that were foraging during the coolest and hottest parts of the day. The hypothesis they had was that pollinators foraging during the hottest parts of the day would tolerate higher temperatures during the CTmax bioassay. Because these students were working from home, some of them had to set up experiments in their kitchens or get very creative to have the experimental set up working in their backyards. Some students even had their kids as their field assistants. In collecting the empirical data to test their hypothesis, they collected CTmax data from several types of pollinators (bees and flies), and from females and males. The preliminary results of their experiments have reached some interesting findings: (1) some bee species (like honey bees) have significantly higher CTmax than most other bees and flies; (2) males tend to have higher CTmax than female bees, and (3) bees that exhibit higher CTmax generally forage during hotter times of the day. To learn more about their projects and findings, please visit and watch this video.
No responses yet