Dissertation
ASSESSING THE DIVERSITY AND FUNCTION OF MANAGED AND WILD BEE COMMUNITIES ON DIVERSIFIED ORGANIC FARMS
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2019
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/111433
Abstract
Globally, bees are the most important pollinators of crops. However, the use of conventional farming practices and the loss of nest sites and floral resources, threatens bee populations and pollination. Here, I demonstrate how resource diversity and organic management contribute to patterns of bee diversity and ecosystem function. I also show how citizen science can be used to educate the general public and monitor bees. My study spanned four years (2014-2017) and was hosted by 36 organic farms in Washington State, USA.
First, I review the response of bees to organic farming. Next, I evaluate the mechanisms by which plant diversity and landscape-context affect bee visitation at the 36 farms across three years (2014-2016). I found that floral complementarity, rather than floral species identity, was the best predictor of floral visits by bees. I also found that increasing landscape diversity mitigated the effects of floral diversity loss and strengthened the effects of floral diversity gains, although wild bees benefited more strongly than honey bees from gains in floral diversity.
I then use beta-diversity equations and species abundance models to evaluate the response of bees to organic farming practices and resource change using data from the same sites and time period. My results suggest that organic practices, landscape context and plant diversity influence the bee species that are present at a site by altering the niches available for individual species.
Finally, I evaluate two citizen science projects over a three-year period (2015-2017) to determine why volunteers participated in data collection on bees. One project required volunteers to actively monitor bees while the other used a passive monitoring technique. Citizen scientists who monitored bees passively rather than actively submitted more data. However, participants in both projects attended courses for education on bees rather than to become a citizen scientist.
My results indicate the importance of floral diversity, landscape context and organic farming for bee species conservation and ecosystem function. I also show that the design of citizen science projects is important for reaching data collection goals of researchers.
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Details
- Title
- ASSESSING THE DIVERSITY AND FUNCTION OF MANAGED AND WILD BEE COMMUNITIES ON DIVERSIFIED ORGANIC FARMS
- Creators
- Elias Harrison Bloom
- Contributors
- David W Crowder (Advisor)William E Snyder (Committee Member)Walter S Sheppard (Committee Member)John P Reganold (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Entomology, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 145
- Identifiers
- 99900581619501842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation