Plant-Insect Interactions at Pollinator Habitats in Mead, NE

Ihlara Gray Author

07/26/2021 Added

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The goal of this project was to provide a baseline understanding of plant-insect interactions at pollinator habitats in Mead, Nebraska.

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[00:00:01.950]Hi everyone. My name is Ihlara Gray.
[00:00:04.080]And this summer I researched plant insect interactions at pollinator habitats in
[00:00:08.220]Mead, Nebraska. Beneficial insects
[00:00:12.030]play important roles in agriculture as pollinators and as natural predators of
[00:00:16.050]pest insects. Unfortunately,
[00:00:18.390]beneficial insects are declining globally for a variety of reasons,
[00:00:22.110]including exposure to pesticides which can kill or impair beneficial insects
[00:00:26.340]and disrupt ecosystem food webs.
[00:00:29.160]The goal of this project was to provide a baseline understanding of plant insect
[00:00:33.060]interactions at pollinator habitats in Mead, Nebraska.
[00:00:37.110]This location is of particular interest because of its proximity to an ethanol
[00:00:40.680]plant, which processed pesticide treated seed
[00:00:43.830]so this project is part of an ongoing effort to monitor the effects of systemic
[00:00:47.640]pesticide contamination on the Mead ecosystem.
[00:00:50.850]High levels of neonicotinoids have been detected in plants
[00:00:53.720]several miles downstream from the ethanol plant,
[00:00:56.310]suggesting that the local insect population may be at risk. Additionally,
[00:01:00.510]one way
[00:01:00.900]to help beneficial insects and recruit them to agricultural areas is to provide
[00:01:04.920]patches of diverse pollinator friendly plants near fields of crops.
[00:01:09.990]Sampling for this project took place in pollinator habitat plots that were seeded
[00:01:13.770]in the spring of 2017. So we
[00:01:15.900]also investigated which seeded plants were still present and being visited by
[00:01:19.710]beneficial insects
[00:01:20.880]after four years since seeding and two years of minimal upkeep.
[00:01:27.470]We conducted our surveys once a week for five weeks at four pollinator habitat
[00:01:31.520]plots on the UNL ENREC property, which is just south of the ethanol plant.
[00:01:36.410]We collected
[00:01:37.010]insects on blooms using aerial nets and vials for 15 minutes at each plot along
[00:01:41.840]a randomly chosen linear transect.
[00:01:44.360]Bees were identified to genus and other insects were identified to family.
[00:01:48.110]We also identified and quantified flowers within a one square meter quadrat at
[00:01:52.130]four random locations along the same transect.
[00:01:57.640]The top panel of this figure shows the total number of insects captured on each type
[00:02:01.300]of plant, the total number of insect families,
[00:02:03.790]representing diversity, and the total number of blooms recorded for each type of
[00:02:07.660]plant. The bottom panel is similar,
[00:02:09.820]but focuses only on bees. Out of 53 plant species that had originally been seeded
[00:02:14.590]at these locations, we observed 21 that were still present,
[00:02:17.800]although it is possible that additional species bloom outside of the timeframe
[00:02:20.980]of this study. Out of those 21, 67% attracted at least one
[00:02:25.540]insect and 43% attracted bees.
[00:02:28.630]Many other plants that did not attract bees or any insects had very few blooms,
[00:02:32.860]so they may not have been abundant enough to be attractive.
[00:02:38.340]This graph separates the total insects collected on each plant into categories
[00:02:42.570]of beneficial, neutral, or pests, where pests are harmful to crops,
[00:02:46.560]beneficial are either pollinators or predators of pests, and neutral is
[00:02:50.430]everything else. Three of these plants, bee bomb, purple prairie
[00:02:54.390]clover, and yellow prairie
[00:02:56.070]coneflower supported mostly beneficial insects, while the others supported a
[00:03:00.160]broader community of insects, including pests.
[00:03:05.680]This table shows the five plants which had the highest abundance and diversity
[00:03:09.190]of bees and the five most abundant bee genera.
[00:03:12.670]The three plants from the last graph,
[00:03:14.140]which mostly attracted beneficial insects are again on this list.
[00:03:17.830]About 86% of total bees captured
[00:03:20.200]and 100% of represented bee genera are found on these five plants,
[00:03:24.430]which suggests that lower diversity habitat plots might still be able to support
[00:03:28.720]a healthy and diverse community of bees. Additionally,
[00:03:31.960]all of these most abundant bee genera were solitary bees and we only collected a
[00:03:36.340]total of three social bees, 2 Bombus and 1 Apis mellifera, in the course of
[00:03:41.200]sampling, which is surprising.
[00:03:47.990]To conclude our results indicated that pollinator plots could potentially be
[00:03:51.950]seeded with fewer plant species and have similar effects in the long run.
[00:03:56.060]Many of the originally seeded species were out competed by volunteer species and
[00:04:00.050]grasses within four years,
[00:04:01.970]and the majority of the sampled bees were found on only a few plant species.
[00:04:06.950]Refining seed mixtures could reduce the cost of seed for similar plots in the
[00:04:10.820]future. Additionally,
[00:04:12.740]seeding plants that are mostly visited by beneficial insects could reduce the
[00:04:16.250]number of pest insects attracted to pollinator plots.
[00:04:19.880]Further research in this area could investigate the seeming absence of social
[00:04:23.480]bees at these plots,
[00:04:24.830]and could also compare between bees with different nesting habits and
[00:04:27.920]lifestyles. Lastly,
[00:04:29.840]this data can be compared to past and future research to see how insect
[00:04:33.500]populations in Mead are changing over time,
[00:04:36.560]which will be important since the systemic pesticide contamination
[00:04:39.560]there may have long-term effects.
[00:04:44.760]I'd like to thank Judy Wu-Smart for being a great advisor,
[00:04:47.700]Edith Ikuze for helping with data collection and Shianne Lindsay for helping with
[00:04:52.270]insect identification.
[00:04:57.500]That's all and thanks for watching.

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Plant-Insect Interactions at Pollinator Habitats in Mead, NE

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