A STUDY ON THE RESILIENCY OF A MUTUALISM BETWEEN CARPENTER BEES AND ANGIOSPERMS ON MOUNT LEMMON IN A CHANGING CLIMATE

Abstract

While many scientists are studying climate change’s impact on abiotic factors, my interest is in studying climate change’s impacts on biotic factors, specifically, to determine if ecosystem networks will be preserved or altered with abiotic change. To examine this topic, I centered my thesis around carpenter bees on Mount Lemmon and their pollination interactions with local flowers. The carpenter bees (Xylocopa californica) are prime candidates for study because they create pollen balls that can be easily accessed, stored, and used in pollen analyses as a proxy for pollination. Kathryn Busby, a graduate student studying the carpenter bees, preserved several provisions from 2016. This gave me the opportunity to determine the composition and diversity of the pollen, create a snapshot of the interaction between the carpenter bees and flowers in 2016, and establish a replicable procedure so that data can be collected in future years. Later studies compared with my data may determine if the families of flowers visited by the carpenter bees or the frequency with which the bees are visiting are changing over time. Monitoring over several decades could tell us if climate change has an effect on local mutualistic networks.