From the Ground Up: Evaluating Abiotic and Biotic Factors Affecting Floral Resources for Pollinator Habitat Restoration
Open Access
- Author:
- Kania, Sarah
- Graduate Program:
- Entomology
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- June 22, 2021
- Committee Members:
- Gary Felton, Program Head/Chair
Harland Martin Patch, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
Heather M Hines, Committee Member
Christina M Grozinger, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor - Keywords:
- Pollinators
Ornamental Plants
Lamiaceae
Brassica rapa
Habitat restoration
Plant-pollinator
Soil nitrogen - Abstract:
- The diversity and productivity of many terrestrial ecosystems is dependent on robust pollinator communities. When designing, establishing, or restoring pollinator habitat, abiotic and biotic factors that affect floral resource availability must be considered to better inform practices. These factors include variation in cultivars or genotypes of focal plants, floral area and morphology, background pollinator community, and site characteristics, including the quality and nutritional composition of the soil. In this thesis, I explore these factors in three chapters. In Chapter 2, I review the principles of plant-pollinator co-evolution and interactions and discuss how these can be applied to establishing and maintaining pollinator habitat in managed landscapes, including agricultural field, urban areas, and solar energy installations. In Chapter 3, through field experiments I investigate the attractiveness of two genera of mint, Mentha and Pycnanthemum, and demonstrate that, despite differences in floral morphology, these different plant species and cultivars attract similar numbers of pollinators and support a diversity of pollinator taxa. I also demonstrate that these plant species have characteristics that allow them to provide late-season nutritional resources for pollinators in landscapes that are challenging to manage. Finally, in Chapter 4, I investigate in greenhouse experiments the impacts of soil nutrition on plant characteristics, including pollen size and production, and on bumble bee foraging preferences, using Brassica rapa as a model system. I demonstrate that while nitrogen deprivation decreases the production of pollen grains, plant genotype affects pollen size, and plant genotype was the only significant determinant in visitation variation. Overall, this thesis demonstrates the value of mints in attracting diverse pollinator taxa, provides insights into strategies for designing and managing plant communities to support pollinators.