Journal Club for October 22, 2021

Join us for our final #STEMWeek event!

On Fri­day, Octo­ber 22^nd , 2021, from 12–1pm, STEM Men­tor Belun­da Moi­se will present her Stone­hill Col­lege senior the­sis, “Analy­sis of native bee nest­ing guild rich­ness and abun­dance in an urban ecosys­tem in South­east­ern Mass­a­chu­setts” in lieu of our week­ly Jour­nal Club meeting.

Abstract: Native bees are essen­tial for main­tain­ing ecosys­tem health because they play a major role in plant pol­li­na­tion. Reports of declines in native bee com­mu­ni­ties have been attrib­uted to urban­iza­tion, prompt­ing research ana­lyz­ing fac­tors of urban ecosys­tems that may con­tribute to these declines. Urban­iza­tion is thought to reduce habi­tat avail­abil­i­ty, which would neg­a­tive­ly impact native bees. For instance, the amount of paved land may make it dif­fi­cult for ground-nest­ing bees to find appro­pri­ate nest­ing sites. Pre­vi­ous stud­ies inves­ti­gat­ing lack of habi­tat resources for bees in urban ecosys­tems have often eval­u­at­ed the bee com­mu­ni­ty as one group. In this study, we ana­lyze the rela­tion­ships between bee nest­ing guild abun­dance, rich­ness, and urban­iza­tion using for­est area, for­est frag­men­ta­tion, and imper­vi­ous area as prox­ies at six sites along an urban gra­di­ent. Bom­bus is exclud­ed from the ground-nester guild and ana­lyzed as an indi­vid­ual group due to its unique euso­cial behav­ior amongst oth­er ground nesters. Nest­ing guild abun­dance and rich­ness were neg­a­tive­ly cor­re­lat­ed with urban­iza­tion, but the strongest rela­tion­ships were obtained for ground-nest­ing bees. Our analy­sis failed to indi­cate a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence between the rela­tion­ships of nest­ing guild abun­dance and rich­ness with urban­iza­tion, indi­cat­ing that our local ecosys­tem may pro­vide enough nest­ing sites to sup­port var­i­ous bees. How­ev­er, Bom­bus abun­dance was pos­i­tive­ly cor­re­lat­ed with urban­iza­tion, con­trary to oth­er ground-nest­ing bees. There­fore, com­par­a­tive ecol­o­gy between Bom­bus and oth­er bees may pro­vide a bet­ter under­stand­ing of their inter­ac­tions with urban ecosystems.

https://massasoit.zoom.us/my/stemresearch

Meet­ing ID: 549 554 5262

Mas­sas­oit STEM events are open to ALL Mas­sas­oit stu­dents, fac­ul­ty, and staff.

Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege encour­ages per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties to par­tic­i­pate in its pro­grams and activ­i­ties. If you antic­i­pate need­ing any type of accom­mo­da­tion or have ques­tions relat­ed to access for this event, please con­tact the Divi­sion of Sci­ence and Math­e­mat­ics at sciencemath@massasoit.edu in advance of your par­tic­i­pa­tion or visit.

Pho­to by KP Bandy­opad­hyay on Unsplash