ESA 2019 Abstracts | Posters

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How does percent impervious land-cover affect the correlation between ground nesting and non-ground nesting bee abundance, richness and diversity?

Abstract
Background/Question/Methods
Inves­ti­ga­tions into the con­nec­tion between land­scap­ing habits and native bee com­mu­ni­ties sug­gests that urban gar­dens may pro­duce bio­di­ver­si­ty in urban­ized areas. We have pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed that the most com­mon bee nest­ing guild in Ply­mouth Coun­ty, Mass­a­chu­setts (ground-nest­ing bees) shows a pos­i­tive cor­re­la­tion in abun­dance with oth­er bee nest­ing guilds. In oth­er words, sites that pro­mote healthy bee com­mu­ni­ties do not favor one nest­ing guild over the oth­er. How­ev­er, it is cur­rent­ly unknown if high­er degrees of urban­iza­tion and agri­cul­ture alter the cor­re­la­tions between nest­ing guilds. For exam­ple, increas­ing imper­vi­ous land-cov­er accom­pa­ny­ing urban­iza­tion may neg­a­tive­ly impact the ground nest­ing bee com­mu­ni­ty by lim­it­ing nest­ing resources. There­fore, in order to deter­mine if urban­iza­tion specif­i­cal­ly impacts ground-nest­ing bees the cur­rent study inves­ti­gates how imper­vi­ous land-cov­er may affect the cor­re­la­tion between ground-nest­ing and non-ground nest­ing bee abun­dance, rich­ness and diver­si­ty. To test the hypoth­e­sis that more urban­ized sites will favor non-ground-nest­ing over ground-nest­ing bees, sam­pling occurred bi-week­ly from ear­ly spring to late fall of 2016, 2017, and 2018 by sweep net­ting and pan traps. ArcGIS was used to cal­cu­late per­cent imper­vi­ous land-cov­er and clas­si­fy sites as rur­al or urban.

Results/Conclusions
Over 3 years, 5540 ground nesters and 2143 non-ground nesters were sam­pled. Sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis showed covari­ance between ground nest­ing and non-ground nest­ing bee abun­dance (F_1,227=70.6, p<0.0001) with abun­dance dif­fer­ing at each site (F_5,227=8.40, p<0.0001) and the same occur­ring for rich­ness and diver­si­ty. These sim­i­lar, pos­i­tive cor­re­la­tions between ground-nest­ing and non-ground nest­ing bees sug­gest a lack of com­pe­ti­tion between nest­ing guilds across dif­fer­ent lev­els of urban­iza­tion. Two rur­al sites with undis­turbed land and high bee abun­dance had the strongest cor­re­la­tions for abun­dance with R² val­ues of 0.492 and 0.438. These sites also showed strong cor­re­la­tions for rich­ness with val­ues of 0.450 and 0.323, and the urban site with sus­tain­able land-use prac­tices had a com­pa­ra­ble cor­re­la­tion to the rur­al sites with a val­ue of 0.407. The rur­al com­mer­cial farm had weak cor­re­la­tions for abun­dance and rich­ness, com­pa­ra­ble to the unman­aged urban park­ing lot, with val­ues of 0.262 and 0.195 for abun­dance and rich­ness. There was no dif­fer­ence in cor­re­la­tion strength for ground nester and non-ground nester guild diver­si­ty across lev­els of urban­iza­tion, with all R² val­ues being less than 0.3. Over­all, weak­er cor­re­la­tions at the most urban sites sug­gests that urban­iza­tion affects nest­ing guilds dif­fer­ent­ly, even though there is no indi­ca­tion of enhanced competition.

Authors

• Tatyan­na More­land-Junior, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Jor­dan Palmer, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Adam Ger­maine, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Prisca Sanon, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Folusho Ajayi, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Andrew Ogu­ma, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Michael Bank­son, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College

Ecological research promotes critical-thinking, science literacy, and data-driven eco-centrism among diverse STEM student-interns at a community college

Abstract
Background/Question/Methods
It is not dif­fi­cult to observe the ease and pace at which mis­in­for­ma­tion regard­ing envi­ron­men­tal issues enters the pub­lic through var­i­ous fast-paced media out­lets. Thus, the need to pro­mote crit­i­cal-think­ing and incor­po­rate sci­ence lit­er­a­cy into under­grad­u­ate STEM cur­ric­u­la may be con­sid­ered para­mount. How­ev­er, sci­ence stu­dents are not typ­i­cal­ly intro­duced to the rig­or­ous process­es of exper­i­men­tal design, data analy­sis, and peer-review until their edu­ca­tions begin to spe­cial­ize more as juniors, seniors, or grad­u­ate stu­dents. It is valu­able to engage STEM stu­dents with diverse aca­d­e­m­ic goals, and edu­ca­tion­al and cul­tur­al back­grounds, in the over­all process of sci­ence before they spe­cial­ize in their cho­sen majors. In this con­text, why not expose stu­dents, who oth­er­wise may nev­er deeply pon­der the links between human activ­i­ties and eco­log­i­cal change, to some basic eco­log­i­cal research? We argue this has the dual ben­e­fit of broad­ly increas­ing sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­cy while also help­ing to build a frame­work for bet­ter under­stand­ing socio-envi­ron­men­tal con­nec­tions. Our under­grad­u­ate research pro­gram, at an urban two-year com­mu­ni­ty col­lege, immers­es stu­dent-interns from diverse back­grounds into pub­li­ca­tion-qual­i­ty eco­log­i­cal research. When interns even­tu­al­ly major in var­i­ous STEM fields, they go with a deep­er appre­ci­a­tion for the com­plex­i­ty of ecosys­tems and a bet­ter toolk­it for eval­u­at­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing sci­en­tif­ic information.

Results/Conclusions
Mon­i­tor­ing the bee com­mu­ni­ty is a logis­ti­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly sus­tain­able project as it requires min­i­mal spe­cial­ized train­ing and equip­ment. Stu­dent-interns have col­lect­ed bees from snow-melt until a zero-bee sam­pling event over three years (2016−2018), iden­ti­fy­ing 7,684 bees to genus (cor­rob­o­rat­ed by an expert tax­on­o­mist). Stu­dent-interns dis­cuss pri­ma­ry research arti­cles relat­ed to pol­li­na­tor research in a grad­u­ate-style jour­nal club. Build­ing on pri­or work and using their own cre­ativ­i­ty, they for­mu­late and address ques­tions from with­in our exten­sive data set. Using this mod­el, eight interns have pre­sent­ed posters at nation­al ESA meet­ings, nine more with cur­rent abstract sub­mis­sions. They also engage the com­mu­ni­ty pre­sent­ing at ele­men­tary schools, com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters, and gar­den clubs. We have employed 64 stu­dent interns since 2016, with greater than 75% either trans­fer­ring suc­cess­ful­ly to four-year col­leges, start­ing a STEM career, or still in the intern­ship. Interns reflect the demo­graph­ics of our col­lege being greater than 50% minor­i­ty, includ­ing self-iden­ti­fy­ing African-Amer­i­cans, Cape Verdeans, Haitians, Asians, His­pan­ics, and Native Amer­i­cans. While many of our interns seek biol­o­gy BS degrees rang­ing from mol­e­c­u­lar- to ecol­o­gy-focused, some are also pur­su­ing engi­neer­ing, psy­chol­o­gy, and pre-med path­ways. These stu­dent-interns will car­ry this eco-cen­tric, data-dri­ven per­spec­tive with them regard­less of the career path they follow.

Author

• Andrew Ogu­ma, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College

Effects of differing land-use practices on genus-level metrics of bee community structure

Abstract
Background/Question/Methods
Bees play a piv­otal role in ani­mal-medi­at­ed pol­li­na­tion; their absence could mean a major loss in impor­tant food crops. Reports of their decline have prompt­ed research on dif­fer­ent land-use prac­tices that may harm or ben­e­fit local bee com­mu­ni­ties. Many stud­ies often mea­sure abun­dance, rich­ness, or diver­si­ty. How­ev­er, use of all three met­rics may pro­vide the most com­plete assess­ment of bee com­mu­ni­ties. For exam­ple, diver­si­ty is a mea­sure of the num­ber and bal­ance of dif­fer­ent types of organ­isms in an ecosys­tem, but does not account for organ­isms that are dif­fi­cult to detect; rich­ness is a sim­ple count of the num­ber of dif­fer­ent organ­isms, but does not account for bal­ance between the types; and final­ly, abun­dance is a sim­ple count of the num­ber of organ­isms, but alone does not indi­cate a healthy ecosys­tem. In the present study, six dif­fer­ent sites of vary­ing land-use prac­tices were assessed to eval­u­ate the mag­ni­tude and sta­bil­i­ty of native bee com­mu­ni­ty abun­dance, rich­ness, and diver­si­ty. Bees were sam­pled bi-week­ly using pan traps and sweep nets from ear­ly spring to late fall in the years 2016, 2017, and 2018. Study sites were cat­e­go­rized into urban and rur­al based on per­cent imper­vi­ous land cov­er using GIS-analysis.

Results/Conclusions
Over three years, a total of 7,684 bees were caught and iden­ti­fied to genus. There was a sig­nif­i­cant effect of year and site on abun­dance, rich­ness, and diver­si­ty (p<0.05 for all) while the inter­ac­tion between site and year was also found to be sig­nif­i­cant (p<0.05 for all). Rur­al sites gen­er­al­ly dis­played high­er abun­dance, rich­ness, and diver­si­ty than urban sites, which is con­sis­tent with pre­vi­ous stud­ies. Dun­rovin Farm, the most rur­al site, had the high­est abun­dance and rich­ness, but not diver­si­ty, sug­gest­ing that both rich­ness and diver­si­ty should be con­sid­ered in deter­min­ing bee com­mu­ni­ty health. Native Mead­ow, a sus­tain­ably man­aged urban site, had met­rics sim­i­lar to the more rur­al sites, sug­gest­ing that these land-use prac­tices may ben­e­fit bee com­mu­ni­ties in an urban set­ting. Over­all, a decline in the bee com­mu­ni­ty was observed for all three met­rics between 2017 and 2018. Fur­ther mon­i­tor­ing will reveal if this is nor­mal year-to-year vari­a­tion or indica­tive of a long term trend. In con­clu­sion, sus­tain­able land-use prac­tices may ben­e­fit the local bee com­mu­ni­ty in urban set­tings; and uti­liz­ing abun­dance, rich­ness, and diver­si­ty togeth­er may be nec­es­sary to pro­vide the most com­pre­hen­sive assess­ment of local bee communities.

Authors

• Fegens Lyncee, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Mol­lie O’Ke­effe, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Michael Bank­son, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Andrew Ogu­ma, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Adam Ger­maine, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Prisca Sanon, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Folusho Ajayi, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College

A method for identifying pollen resources for brood development in cavity-nesting native bees

Abstract
Background/Question/Methods
Native bees’ crit­i­cal role in ecosys­tem func­tion and agri­cul­ture has giv­en rise to a vari­ety of efforts to sup­port their com­mu­ni­ties. This has result­ed in wide­spread cul­ti­va­tion of wild plants (com­pan­ion plant­i­ngs) to improve their for­ag­ing resources, and deploy­ment of arti­fi­cial nest­ing habi­tats (bee hotels) to serve as breed­ing grounds. How­ev­er, there is lit­tle infor­ma­tion regard­ing the types of pol­lens gath­ered by native bees for pro­vi­sion­ing brood with­in these bee hotels. To bet­ter under­stand the ben­e­fit of these prac­tices, a method for iden­ti­fy­ing the pollen resources used in brood devel­op­ment would help define the inter­ac­tion between nest­ing and for­ag­ing resources. The present study used a two-loci, sin­gle PCR, DNA-based iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of pollen grains tak­en from sam­pled native bee brood cells. Brood cells were obtained from a bee hotel deployed spring to ear­ly fall 2018. Pollen load from a sin­gle brood cell was col­lect­ed, sus­pend­ed in water and ran­dom­ly sam­pled. Sin­gle pollen grains were stained with ani­line blue, iso­lat­ed under a micro­scope and trans­ferred to a 25-µL PCR tube con­tain­ing two sets of primers; (ITS2, trnH-psbA), Phire™ Plant Direct PCR Mas­ter Mix, and nucle­ase free water. Ampli­fi­ca­tion was car­ried out at an anneal­ing tem­per­a­ture of 62°C for thir­ty-five cycles.

Results/Conclusions
Ampli­fi­ca­tion of two regions of DNA in a sin­gle PCR reac­tion can gen­er­ate mul­ti­ple ampli­cons for sequenc­ing from a sin­gle source. The use of two loci in plant iden­ti­fi­ca­tion by DNA bar­cod­ing helps to improve the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pow­er of these regions when iden­ti­fy­ing the species of pollen with­in the Gen­Bank® data­base. Pre­lim­i­nary PCR exper­i­ments demon­strat­ed that two loci could be ampli­fied direct­ly from an indi­vid­ual pollen grain tak­en from a brood cell. The trnH-psbA ampli­con showed less suc­cess in ampli­fi­ca­tion as evi­denced by the lack of bands pro­duced dur­ing elec­trophore­sis rel­a­tive to ITS on-agarose gel. This sug­gests an eas­i­er PCR ampli­fi­ca­tion of the nuclear locus com­pared to the plas­tid locus, pos­si­bly due to copy num­ber vari­a­tion. Pre­lim­i­nary sequenc­ing results from ampli­fied ITS2 region revealed mixed pol­lens from a vari­ety of flow­er­ing plants includ­ing; Vicia amoe­na, Pstium sati­va, & Tri­foli­um repens. A com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of sea­son­al pair­ings between local plant and cav­i­ty nest­ing bee species, specif­i­cal­ly brood resources, would allow selec­tive plant­i­ngs to pro­mote the spe­cif­ic native bee that is like­ly to inhab­it man-made habi­tat. Fur­ther­more, this type of infor­ma­tion could be par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful in an agri­cul­tur­al set­ting where inter­ac­tions between nest­ing pref­er­ences, for­ag­ing pref­er­ences and crop pol­li­na­tion might be established.

Authors

• Zachary Thuotte, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Matthew Healy, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Adam Ger­maine, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Prisca Sanon, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Folusho Ajayi, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Andrew Ogu­ma, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Michael Bank­son, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College

The kleptoparasitic bee Nomada as a potential indicator of ecosystem health

Abstract
Background/Question/Methods
Due to the decline of native bees, imple­men­ta­tion of land-use prac­tices to pro­mote sta­ble bee com­mu­ni­ties has become pop­u­lar. To quan­ti­fy the impact of these land-use prac­tices, stud­ies often focus on the diver­si­ty and abun­dance of the entire bee com­mu­ni­ty. How­ev­er, research has shown that par­a­sitic bees are strong­ly affect­ed by envi­ron­men­tal changes, sug­gest­ing their poten­tial as an ecosys­tem health indi­ca­tor. Addi­tion­al­ly, these par­a­sites are thought to con­trol and sta­bi­lize their host pop­u­la­tions, and these par­a­site-host rela­tion­ships may pro­vide addi­tion­al insight into bee com­mu­ni­ty health. The present study eval­u­ates the abun­dance of the par­a­sitic bee Noma­da and its rela­tion­ship to the host bee, Andrena, as sur­ro­gate mark­ers of over­all bee com­mu­ni­ty health at six study sites across South­east­ern Mass­a­chu­setts. The six sites were cat­e­go­rized into rur­al or urban based on per­cent imper­vi­ous land cov­er quan­ti­fied using ArcGIS. Two of the sites imple­ment sus­tain­able land-use prac­tices which include a reduc­tion in chem­i­cal use, no-mow areas, and plant­i­ng of native flo­ra. Data were col­lect­ed from 2016 to 2018 dur­ing the for­ag­ing sea­son, using a bi-week­ly sam­pling method that includ­ed 24h-pan traps and 1h sweep netting.

Results/Conclusions
Over three sea­sons, 156 Noma­da and 145 Andrena were col­lect­ed. Site impact­ed Noma­da abun­dance (F_1,89=3.1, p=0.03) and pair­wise com­par­isons revealed that the high­est Noma­da abun­dance was present at a rur­al site with reduced pes­ti­cide use, and at a sub­ur­ban site char­ac­ter­ized by lim­it­ed imper­vi­ous­ness, a com­mu­ni­ty gar­den, abun­dant for­est edge and infre­quent mow­ing. Noma­da abun­dance mim­ic­ked the over­all bee abun­dance sug­gest­ing that the par­a­site has poten­tial as an ecosys­tem health mark­er. Although, no sig­nif­i­cant covari­ance of Andrena and Noma­da abun­dances was detect­ed (F_1,89=3.1, p=0.08), there was a con­sid­er­able impact of site on the weak Andrena – Noma­da abun­dance rela­tion­ship (F_5,78=4.2, p=0.002). The strongest pos­i­tive covari­a­tion was found at the afore­men­tioned sub­ur­ban site which sug­gests this site has an addi­tion­al ben­e­fi­cial effect on the bee com­mu­ni­ty allow­ing a healthy host-par­a­site rela­tion­ship. Oth­er sites, includ­ing urban and rur­al areas, had few­er Noma­da and dis­played weak­er host-par­a­site cor­re­la­tions. How­ev­er, some Noma­da spp. are known to par­a­sitize oth­er gen­era which could weak­en the host-par­a­site sig­nal. Alto­geth­er, human activ­i­ty appears to influ­ence the abun­dance of Noma­da, and vari­a­tion observed in the strength of the host-par­a­site rela­tion­ship sug­gests that mon­i­tor­ing this mark­er could yield new insight on the health of the bee community.

Authors

• Kinga Auguste, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Adam Ger­maine, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Prisca Sanon, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Folusho Ajayi, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Andrew Ogu­ma, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Michael Bank­son, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College

Does forest cover affect Osmia and other cavity-nesting bee abundance?

Abstract
Background/Question/Methods
Bee com­mu­ni­ties serve an impor­tant role in our local ecosys­tems as they pol­li­nate sev­er­al crops and flow­er­ing plants. Many farm­ers rely on hon­ey­bees (Apis mel­lif­era) for pol­li­na­tion. How­ev­er, due to the decline in the domes­tic hon­ey­bee hives, there may be an increased reliance on native pol­li­na­tors. Cav­i­ty-nest­ing bees have the poten­tial to be used for crop pol­li­na­tion as they can be man­aged using arti­fi­cial nest­ing habi­tats such as trap nests. The genus Osmia specif­i­cal­ly, is an impor­tant pol­li­na­tor of pop­u­lar orchard trees and have been found to be more effi­cient than hon­ey­bees in cer­tain apple orchards. Pre­vi­ous research has shown that cav­i­ty-nest­ing bee abun­dance is pos­i­tive­ly cor­re­lat­ed with for­est cov­er, but lit­tle is known about their pref­er­ences with­in more urban­ized set­tings. In this study, we exam­ined the effects of for­est cov­er on the abun­dance of cav­i­ty-nest­ing bees in South­east­ern Mass­a­chu­setts, with a spe­cif­ic focus on the genus Osmia. From 2016–2018, bees were col­lect­ed biweek­ly at six dif­fer­ent sites via pan trap and sweep net, dur­ing the months of April to Octo­ber. OLIVER, MassGIS’s online map­ping tool, was used to esti­mate per­cent for­est cov­er with­in a 500m buffer at each of the six study sites.

Results/Conclusions
Through­out the three years we col­lect­ed a total of 177 cav­i­ty-nest­ing bees out of which 92 belong to the genus Osmia. Sta­tis­ti­cal tests showed a sig­nif­i­cant effect of site on over­all cav­i­ty-nester abun­dance (F_5,233=3.7, p=0.003) along with Osmia abun­dance (F_5,131=3.5, p=0.005). Osmia and total cav­i­ty-nest­ing bee abun­dances at the least forest­ed site were sim­i­lar to the abun­dances at the most forest­ed site which indi­cates that there is no direct effect of for­est cov­er on Osmia and oth­er cav­i­ty-nesters abun­dance. The sig­nif­i­cant effect of site on Osmia and oth­er cav­i­ty-nesters abun­dance may be due to oth­er fac­tors at the sites rather than foresta­tion. The abun­dance of Osmia as well as the over­all abun­dance of cav­i­ty-nesters at the urban sites with sus­tain­able land-use prac­tices were com­pa­ra­ble to the rur­al site with the high­est abun­dance, where­as the abun­dance at the urban site lack­ing these prac­tices was sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er. In an urban/­sub-urban set­ting, over­all cav­i­ty-nest­ing bee abun­dance does not seem to have a strong cor­re­la­tion with for­est cov­er, sug­gest­ing oth­er fac­tors such as sus­tain­able land-use prac­tices may be more impor­tant to help pro­mote their community.

Authors

• Belun­da Moi­se, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Adam Ger­maine, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Prisca Sanon, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Folusho Ajayi, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Andrew Ogu­ma, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Michael Bank­son, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College

The potential of gender ratio in mason bees (Osmia spp.) as an indicator of ecosystem health

Abstract
Background/Question/Methods
Bees are con­sid­ered key­stone organ­isms with­in the ecosys­tem, pol­li­nat­ing both crops and wild plants. The genus Osmia (mason bees) are effec­tive pol­li­na­tors due to their mor­pho­log­i­cal fea­tures, spe­cial­ist for­ag­ing pref­er­ences, and the propen­si­ty to eas­i­ly deposit col­lect­ed pollen on recip­i­ent flow­ers. Although a vari­ety of fac­tors are involved, dif­fer­ent land use prac­tices, such as the use of pes­ti­cides, fre­quent mow­ing and increased urban­iza­tion have been sug­gest­ed to con­tribute to the decline of bee com­mu­ni­ties. Dur­ing peri­ods of envi­ron­men­tal stress, female Osmia allo­cate ener­gy and resources to pro­duc­ing more male off­spring than female. Even though Osmia tend to shift from most­ly males to most­ly females over the sea­son, their over­all sex ratio may be affect­ed by their sur­round­ing habi­tat con­di­tions. In addi­tion, this phe­nom­e­non may impact Osmia pop­u­la­tions if future gen­er­a­tions con­tin­ue to pro­duce few­er repro­duc­ing females. There­fore, in order to eval­u­ate Osmia sex ratios as an indi­ca­tor of ecosys­tem health, bees of genus Osmia were sam­pled from 2016 to 2018 using pan traps and sweep net­ting at six sites in South­east­ern Mass­a­chu­setts and sexed by count­ing anten­nal seg­ments and by gen­er­al mor­phol­o­gy. Specif­i­cal­ly, we hypoth­e­sized that male to female ratios will be low­er in rur­al sites com­pared to urban sites.

Results/Conclusions
ArcGIS analy­sis was used to char­ac­ter­ize each study site as rur­al (<8% imper­vi­ous land cov­er; three sites) or urban (>30% imper­vi­ous land cov­er; three sites). Results show a sig­nif­i­cant effect of month on male to female ratio in each year (Cochran-Man­tel-Haen­szel, M²> = 31.749, df =2, p<0.01), with the over­all per­cent male for all sites over all three years being 74.6%, 19.2% and 0% for May, June and July, respec­tive­ly. This indi­cates that male Osmia for­age ear­li­er in the sea­son while the females appear to for­age lat­er in the sea­son. Although there was no effect of site on Osmia sex ratios, there was an effect of site on total female abun­dance (H_5,90=7.94, p=0.03). This sug­gests that female Osmia total abun­dance may be also a good indi­ca­tor of ecosys­tem health, espe­cial­ly, when the sam­ple size is small. Con­tin­ued mon­i­tor­ing of Osmia pop­u­la­tions may reveal if this is nor­mal year-to-year changes or indica­tive of a long-term trend. In this sit­ting, a com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of Osmia sex allo­ca­tion and more fre­quent sam­pling with­in the flight sea­son may be nec­es­sary to deter­mine if Osmia sex ratios can be used as an indi­ca­tor of ecosys­tem health.

Authors

• Vania Lopes, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Adam Ger­maine, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Prisca Sanon, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Folusho Ajayi, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Andrew Ogu­ma, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Michael Bank­son, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College

How does percent impervious land cover correlate with bee abundance and richness at different spatial scales?

Abstract
Background/Question/Methods
Pol­li­na­tors play a cru­cial role in many ecosys­tems as well as in agri­cul­ture. Declin­ing bee abun­dance and rich­ness may indi­cate dimin­ish­ing ecosys­tem health as well as threat­en the glob­al food sup­ply. Urban­iza­tion and the accom­pa­ny­ing increase in imper­vi­ous land cov­er may degrade bee habi­tat and con­tribute to this observed decline in bee com­mu­ni­ties. Dif­fer­ing spa­tial scales were cho­sen as many stud­ies that cor­re­late a land attribute with an mark­er for ecosys­tem health, such as bee abun­dance and rich­ness, use a vari­ety of spa­tial scales. This study was designed to find the most opti­mal sized spa­tial scale by eval­u­at­ing dif­fer­ent sizes to find which scale that imper­vi­ous land cov­er cor­re­lat­ed best with bee abun­dance and bee rich­ness. There­fore, we inves­ti­gat­ed the cor­re­la­tions between imper­vi­ous land cov­er and bee rich­ness, as well as bee abun­dance, in South­east­ern Mass­a­chu­setts at four dif­fer­ent spa­tial scales. Per­cent imper­vi­ous land cov­er was cal­cu­lat­ed for six study sites at 100, 300, 600, and 900 meter spa­tial scales through ArcGIS soft­ware. Bees were sam­pled on a biweek­ly basis from ear­ly spring to late fall, in the years 2016 through 2018, using pan traps and sweep-net­ting techniques.

Results/Conclusions
A total of 7648 bees were caught across a three year sam­pling peri­od, with rich­ness rang­ing from 0 (when no bees were caught) to 16 dif­fer­ent gen­era. Per­cent imper­vi­ous land cov­er dif­fered at each spa­tial scale for all of the sites. Sta­tis­ti­cal tests were done using Pear­son­’s cor­re­la­tion coef­fi­cient (r‑value). All results pro­duced sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant neg­a­tive cor­re­la­tions of imper­vi­ous land cov­er with both rich­ness and abun­dance which were stronger with increas­ing spa­tial scale size, with 900 meters hav­ing the strongest cor­re­la­tion (r = ‑0.4138 and r =-0.2956 respec­tive­ly). This sug­gests that, out of all the spa­tial scales test­ed, 900 meters would be the best for cor­re­lat­ing the effect of imper­vi­ous land cov­er on bee rich­ness and abun­dance for this spe­cif­ic study. Future analy­sis will need to be done with spa­tial scales greater than 900 meters to see when the cor­re­la­tion will begin to weaken.

Authors

• Matthew Healy, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Zachary Thuotte, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Adam Ger­maine, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Prisca Sanon, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Folusho Ajayi, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Andrew Ogu­ma, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College
• Michael Bank­son, Mas­sas­oit Com­mu­ni­ty College