Using Rana to Screen Plant Species for Effective Pollinator Support During Ecosystem Restoration

Transcription

1 Using Rana to Screen Plant Species for Effective Pollinator Support During Ecosystem Restoration Bruce Pavlik and Sarah Barlow A. Conservation Research at RBG B. SOS Plants: Relative Value to Pollinators C. Introducing Rana D. Field Pilot at Bonderman-Rio Mesa Center E. Evaluating Pollinator Support: Visitor Support Index

2 Conservation Department 2016: Diversifying our Research Mission Conservation Research Mission Improving Land Management Practices

3 Using Rana to Screen Plant Species for Effective Pollinator Support During Ecosystem Restoration Bruce Pavlik and Sarah Barlow A. Conservation Research at RBG B. SOS Plants: Relative Value to Pollinators C. Introducing Rana D. Field Pilot at Bonderman-Rio Mesa Center E. Evaluating Pollinator Support: Visitor Support Index

4 Federal Initiatives Inspiring Plant-Pollinator Research Presidential Memorandum (Creating a Federal Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators) USGS research initiative (Pollinator Research Action Plan) USFWS Greater Sage Grouse Conservation Agreement (Forb-pollinator interactions) BLM s Seeds of Success program (National Seed Strategy for Rehabilitation and Restoration)

5 How Best to Use Seeds of Success Plants to Support Pollinators During Restoration? Pollination syndromes are not necessarily predictive of floral resource utilization Restoration is site-specific pollinator populations are local Conflicting observations of which plant species provide effective support Limited, often anocdotal, datasets

6 Site-Specific Evaluation of SOS Plants and their Pollinators Continuous Monitoring of Visitation Rates, Species Diversity and Behavior

7 Natural Populations at Rio Mesa Opuntia erinacea Asclepias asperula Sphaeralcea parvifolia Penstemon palmeri Cleome lutea C. serrulata SOS Plants Evaluated (May-June and August 2016) Faux Populations (greenhouse grown, transported to Rio Mesa) Phacelia crenulata Helianthus annuus Created Populations in Red Butte Canyon Gaillardia aristata Allium cernuum

8 Using Rana to Screen Plant Species for Effective Pollinator Support During Ecosystem Restoration Bruce Pavlik and Sarah Barlow A. Conservation Research at RBG B. SOS Plants: Relative Value to Pollinators C. Introducing Rana D. Field Pilot at Bonderman-Rio Mesa Center E. Evaluating Pollinator Support: Visitor Support Index

9 What is Rana? Rana is an automated motion sensitive detection system for recording plant-pollinator interactions Modified public domain package Motion Recognition based on movement, size, shape and colour The frog does not seem to see or, at any rate, is not concerned with the detail of stationary parts of the world around him. He will starve to death surrounded by food if it is not moving. His choice of food is determined only by size and movement. He will leap to capture any object the size of an insect or worm, providing it moves like one. Letvin et al. (1968) What the frog s eye tells the frogs brain.

10 RANA Automated Monitoring Savings in time and labour Able to suppress wind and shadow Continuous data capture (24/7) Wireless communication More observations/data permanent record User-defined settings (e.g. body size) Reduced human interference on animals Cost-effective Camera Raspberry pi 1.0 data acquisition

11 Permanent Records for Scoring avi file converted to mpeg using avitompeg Insects viewed as a movie (mpeg) in the virtualdub movie editing suite and identified visually

12 Validating Rana efficacy Essential to verify Rana efficacy Mounted specimens held under the camera triggered recording. Non-insect objects had no effect. Comparisons between Rana output and manual observations indicated that the system was highly effective

13 Insect ID Combined approach - Rana, manual observations and field collected specimens Experts needed faunas undercollected! Surrogate ID: body size categories to measure diversity, evenness, visitation rates Tiny Small Medium Large Very Large (Perdita sp.) (unidentified bee) (Agapostemon sp.) (Bombus huntii) (Bombus morrisoni)

14 Using Rana to Screen Plant Species for Effective Pollinator Support During Ecosystem Restoration Bruce Pavlik and Sarah Barlow A. Conservation Research at RBG B. SOS Plants: Relative Value to Pollinators C. Introducing Rana D. Field Pilot at Bonderman-Rio Mesa Center E. Evaluating Pollinator Support: Visitor Support Index

15 Dr. Sarah Barlow Newcastle University, UK now on RBG Conservation staff

16 Rio Mesa Center Pollination Garden, Rio Mesa RBG Children s Garden

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18 Rana movies KrJ4

19 Mellisodes? (Helianthus) Perdita (Sphaeralcea) Agapostemon? (Opuntia) Agapostemon virescens? (Opuntia) Bombus (Penstemon)

20 34 hrs observation time 26 hrs observation time

21 Using Rana to Screen Plant Species for Effective Pollinator Support During Ecosystem Restoration Bruce Pavlik and Sarah Barlow A. Conservation Research at RBG B. SOS Plants: Relative Value to Pollinators C. Introducing Rana D. Field Pilot at Bonderman-Rio Mesa Center E. Evaluating Pollinator Support: Visitor Support Index

22 Evaluating SOS Plant Species for Pollinator Support VSI = TVR X S X H X E H total visit rate (v/hr) body size visitor support index (VSI) Frequent insect visitation by richness diversity evenness body size genus Phacelia crenulata tiny Penstemon palmeri very large Bombus, Xylocopa Cleome lutea small, tiny Opuntia erinacea medium Agapostemon Sphaeralcea parvifolia small, tiny Perdita Cleome serrulata tiny Asclepias asperula large Bombus, Xylocopa, butterflies Helianthus annus medium Mellisodes

23 Further developments Infra-red night time vision 3Z1A Solar powered Additional R&D required to limit non-target motion activation

24 Pollinator Monitoring Other Applications: Explaining low seed set in Astragalus holmgreniorum (Funded by ESMF and The Nature Conservancy) SOS Evaluations Phase 2 (Funded by BLM - Utah) Greater Sage Grouse Forbs Vegetation supporting chick success Insect food resources (Funded by BLM - Washington D.C.)

25 Conservation Department 2016: Diversifying our Research Mission Conservation Research Mission Improving Land Management Practices