Ian Roberts presented his thesis research “Impacts of Prescribed Fire and Land Use History on Ground Nesting Bees” at the Chicago Botanic Garden on April 30th. The presentation was well received by those attendees in the room and those who attended via zoom. After the public presentation, Ian successfully defend his Masters thesis for the program in Plant Biology and Conservation at NU. Congratulations, Ian!
Ian’s research advances our understanding of ground nesting bees, prescribed fires, and nesting habitat for bees in remnant and restored tallgrass prairie. Stay tuned for a publication and recommendations for land managers!
This is part of our project “How Do Prescribed Fires Affect Native Prairie Bees?”
Funding for this project was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR).
During the summer of 2024, Team Echinacea completed the second year of its ENRTF funded project to better understand how prescribed fire influences ground nesting bee habitat, food resources, and diversity. Understanding the associations between land management methods and ground nesting bees is essential for providing reccomendations to policymakers and practitioners interested in native bee conservation.
We surveyed solitary bee diversity and nesting habitat before and after prescribed fires in a subset of 30 prairie remnants and 15 prairie restorations to determine how prescribed fire affects solitary bee nesting habitat and abundance. We used emergence traps to sample the community of solitary ground nesting bees. This was complemented by detailed measures of soil and litter to characterize how prescribed burning influences the nesting habitat (read more here).
2024 REU student Zach Zarling deploys an emergence trap at a site near Hoffman, Minnesota
We deployed emergence traps at our random “burn and bee points”(BBPTs) in prairie remnants and restorations from early June to mid September. Our deployments spanned three rotations (4-6) of BBPTs and we put out a total of ~1,159 emergence traps. On reccomendation from Dr. Alex Harmon-Threatt, we also performed 10 minute “pollard walks” on deployment to estimate the number of foraging bees at each site. These foraging numbers will be compared to nesting incidence as part of Ian Roberts’ thesis project.
As of December 21st, specimens caught in this year’s deployments have been pinned, labeled, and transported from Chicago Botanic Garden to the University of Minnesota, where Zach Portman, a bee taxonomist, will identify them. Team Echinacea also collected lots of non-bee bycatch while processing specimens collected in the traps: including millipedes, flies, and even a prairie skink! To avoid wasting these specimens, we plan to categorize this bycatch into broad taxonomic groups (like Dipterans, Orthopterans, etc) and examine potential associations between our experimental treatments and general arthropod diversity across our study sites.
Pinned specimen from 2024’s emergence trapping, likely an Agapostemon virescens.
While working on pinning and processing specimens, Ian Roberts produced a poster containing analyses from the 2023 emergence trapping data to present at Entomology 2024. The poster can be viewed here. Future data analyses will feature data from both sampling years, as well as microhabitat measurments and and diversity indices.
Start year: 2023
Location: prairie remnants and restorations in Solem Township, MN.
Data collected: insect samples, counts of foraging bees
Samples or specimens collected: Pinned bees are currently being identified at University of Minnesota. Bycatch is in the freezer at Chicago Botanic Garden.
Products: poster presented at Entomology 2024 (see above for link)
A close up of an Agapostemon specimen with its tongue sticking out. The current collection of bees. Many more to come!
As of a few weeks ago, Emergence trapping for the ENRTF project is finished! It was a massive endeavor to complete, and I’m thankful for everyone on the team who pitched in. Now that our vials of bugs have been moved from Minnesota to Illinois, it’s time to start going through them to look for bees. It’s smelly work, but also a great opportunity to brush up on taxonomy and identification skills. We’re planning to hire a work-study student to help with pinning and data entry in the next few days. Until then, more for me!
NOTE: Funding for this project was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR).
With a smaller crew and slightly soggy start to the morning, it was all-hands-on-deck as we continue to chip away at measuring experimental plot 1. We made great progress today, but still found time to stop and take pictures of cool critters! After lunch, we all headed out to retrieve and deploy emergence traps. It was a busy day for e-trapping, with three teams visiting eight sites in total.
Big beautiful eyes, such a shiny green, gorgeous!Absolute stunner. (bit Wyatt, but we forgive her)
Big project update! For my summer project I am looking at nectar and pollen volumes in other Asteraceae plants that are non – Echinacea in burned sites versus unburned sites. This is important because pollinators depend on pollen and nectar to get the nutrients they need. A large decrease in pollinators has been found due to prairie fragmentation, and studying whether fire can help in producing a higher quantity of pollen and nectar can be shared with land managers to help create more viable resources for pollinators in their prairie restoration efforts. My two species of focus for now are Coreopsis palmata (also known as prairie coreopsis) and Helianthus pauciflorus (also known as stiff sunflower). Mid-summer coreopsis blooming is starting to come to close and so are my nectar and pollen measurements! Onto sunflowers here in the next couple weeks!
Time for daily update: Total demo continues! One group of 4 and one group of 3 went out to a total of 4 different sites. These included south of golf course, north of golf course, and yellow orchid hill east and west. A few people also finished up or pollen and nectar collection on Echinacea heads.
This afternoon a group went out and did e-trap collection and retrieval. We have been working on rotation 5 this week after finally polishing off rotation 4 late last week! The rest of us went and did measurements of Echinacea in one of our experimental plots (P9). Measurements included: flowering rosette count, basal rosette count, total basal leaves, height of tallest basal leaf, height of tallest cauline leaf (aka leaf on stem without a petiole), and height of head to name a few. Our plant of the day was finding a diseased Echinacea with over 360 basal leaves. To finish off the day we moved the goats to a new paddock and enjoyed some cold watermelon in the late week heat.
Nothing beats cold watermelon after a hot day of field work!Incentive to get the goats to their new paddock.
Today Team Echinacea continued to wrap up the pollen and nectar collection. Only a few focal plants are still in flower. Another group worked on flagging and recording demographic information for every flowering Echinacea plant in every remnant site. Some of these plants have tags dating back decades! In the experimental plots, Stuart trained team members to find and measure all Echinacea. This data will help us understand performance of E. angustifolia x pallida hybrids. Round 5 of emergence trapping started recently. The team members are now pros at deploying and retrieving the traps.
Today we welcomed goats to Hjelm. They are already hard at work eating their way through the foliage. Keep up the good work, goats! Most of the humans worked on finishing searching for Stipa in p01 and started planting a new production garden to generate seed to add to the experimental plots. Ian and Liam valiantly continued staking points for the pollinator emergence study. Wyatt and Abby are getting ready to begin a study investigating the effects of fire on pollen and nectar production in Echinacea angustifolia. This project has many excellent collaborators and is part of the MN ENTRF funded research on prescribed fire and ground nesting bees.
A smooth start to the first emergence trapping deployment! Today we placed 23 traps at three sites, making good use of our new color-coded flagging system. So cool to see our work from the last few weeks starting to pay off!
Some emergence trapping sites are a lot smaller than others! It will be interesting to see whether size is associated with catch rate. Do bees prefer to nest in big sites? REU student Zach deploys a trap at our first site of the day. This site was burned earlier in the spring, can you see how short the vegetation is?
These traps will be out for four days, then emptied and sent back out to new sites on Monday. Fingers crossed we’ll see some bees!
NOTE: Funding for this project was provided by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR).
During the summer of 2023, Team Echinacea embarked on an ENRTF funded mission to better understand how prescribed fires influences solitary bee nesting habitat, food resources, and diversity is critical for providing recommendations about how prescribed fire should be used to promote pollinator conservation and healthy prairie.
We surveyed solitary bee diversity and nesting habitat before and after prescribed fires in a subset of 30 prairie remnants and 15 prairie restorations to determine how prescribed fire affects solitary bee nesting habitat and abundance. We used emergence traps to investigate composition of solitary bees in prairies. This was complemented by detailed measures of soil and litter to characterize how prescribed burning influences the nesting habitat (read more here).
We deployed emergence traps at our random points (bb points) in prairie remnants and restorations in mid-June – early September. Our deployment spanned three rotations of bb points and we put out a total of ~1,238 emergence traps.
El, Luke, and Jan, 2023 pollinator crew, deploy an emergence trap at a bb point.
As of September 28, members of Team Echinacea had processed 850 vials, 122 of which contained bees. Our preliminary catch rate is 14%! These specimens were pinned and are currently at Chicago Botanic Garden, awaiting transportation to University of Minnesota where Zach Portman, a bee taxonomist, will identify them. Team Echinacea also collected lots of non-bee bycatch while processing specimens collected in the traps. Bycatch is currently stored in our freezer at Chicago Botanic Garden.
Jan pins a bee that they found while processing vials from emergence trapping!
Ian Roberts, a M.S. student with the Echinacea Project, has taken charge of the Emergence trapping project and is currently coordinating data entry. When emergence trapping resumes in the 2024 field season, we will be well set up, thanks to detailed written and videotaped protocols made by our summer 2023 pollinator team. The prtocol can be found here: “~/Dropbox/enrtf/emergenceTrapping2023/Emergence Trap Protocol.pdf”. Video instructions are located in “~/Dropbox/enrtf/emergenceTrapping2023/exampleVideos”.
Start year: 2023
Location: prairie remnants and restorations in Solem Township, MN.
