Last week Olivia attended the Entomological Society of America’s (ESA) annual meet in Phoenix, AZ where she presented her research. Olivia’s talk was titled “Do thermal microhabitats influence pollinator foraging behavior? Quantifying flower visitors with automated camera traps” and described research done by herself and undergraduate collaborators from the University of Wisconsin-Madison during the summer of 2023.
In this work, Olivia and her collaborators were interested in understanding how microhabitat variation in temperature influence pollinator visitation. To answer this question, Olivia and her crew utilized pollinator camera traps known as AutoPollS (= Autonomous Pollinator Samplers) to automatically record flower visitors throughout the day on shaded and unshaded flowers. AutoPollS observations were validated with human observations and the AutoPollS were equipped with temperature sensors to confirm that the shaded treatments were in fact reducing the temperature of the shaded flowers. Preliminary results indicate that shaded treatments were successful in creating thermal microhabitats within our study patch, and that these were utilized more often by flower visitors when daytime temperatures peaked. Ultimately, this work suggests that thermal refugia within the landscape may indeed serve a useful purpose for pollinators and flower visitors, and that this is something that we should keep in mind when designing conservation plans in the future.
In addition to presenting a talk, Olivia organized a symposium with collaborators from Texas A&M and the University of Maryland titled “Multifunctional Chemicals? Plant Volatiles Influence Herbivores, Pollinators, and Natural Enemies”. The symposium was met with high attendance and enthusiasm about the notion of multifunctional volatile chemicals and may very well lead to future collaborations.
Above: speakers and organizers from the multifunctional chemicals symposium!
While in Phoenix, Olivia was able to reconnect with peers and expand her network, ultimately leaving the conference feeling recharged and energized for new, collaborative research ventures.
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