<br>
<hr noshade>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">This release can be found in the
USGS Newsroom at: </font><a href="http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2833"><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><u>http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2833</u></font></a><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">.</font>
<p>
<table width=100%>
<tr valign=top>
<td width=100%><a href=http://www.usgs.gov/><img src=cid:_1_0A334E540A3348C0005A88EA852578B7 alt="USGS main page"></a>
<br><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><b>News Release</b></font>
<br>
<hr>
<tr valign=top>
<td><font size=1><br>
</font>
<table width=100%>
<tr valign=top>
<td width=19%><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">June 21, 2011 </font>
<td width=80%><font size=1><br>
</font>
<table width=100%>
<tr>
<td width=30%><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Ralph Grundel </font>
<td width=35%><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">219-926-8336 x422 </font>
<td width=33%><a href=mailto:rgrundel@usgs.gov><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><u>rgrundel@usgs.gov</u></font></a><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">
</font>
<tr>
<td><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Catherine Puckett </font>
<td><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">352-264-3532 </font>
<td><a href=mailto:cpuckett@usgs.gov><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><u>cpuckett@usgs.gov</u></font></a><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">
</font>
<tr>
<td><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Marisa Lubeck </font>
<td><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">303-202-4765 </font>
<td><a href=mailto:mlubeck@usgs.gov><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><u>mlubeck@usgs.gov
</u></font></a></table>
<br></table>
<br></table>
<br>
<br>
<hr>
<br><font size=6 face="Times New Roman"><b>Picky Pollinators</b></font>
<br><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><b>Native Bees are Selective about
Where They Live and Feed</b></font>
<br>
<p><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&pub=oc_web&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usgs.gov%2Fnewsroom%2Farticle.asp%3FID%3D2833&title=" target=_blank><img src=cid:_1_0A92121C0A920E44005A88EA852578B7 alt="Bookmark and Share"></a>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><b>Note to Editors: It’s National
Pollinator Week, June 20-26</b></font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">INDIANA DUNES NATIONAL LAKESHORE,
Ind. — Native bees – often small, stingless, solitary and unnoticed in
the flashier world of stinging honeybees – are quite discriminating about
where they live, according to U.S. Geological Survey research.</font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">The study found that, overall, composition
of a plant community is a weak predictor of the composition of a bee community,
which may seem counterintuitive at first, said USGS scientist and study
lead Ralph Grundel. This may be because specialized plant-bee interactions,
in which a given bee species only pollinates one plant species and that
plant species is only pollinated by that bee species are not common.
More common is for a plant species to be pollinated by many pollinator
species and each pollinator species pollinating many species of plants.</font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Given this complex network of interaction
between plants and their pollinators, it is not surprising that knowing
which plants occur in an area does not necessarily allow us to predict
which bees will occur in that area, Grundel said.</font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Unraveling such mysteries surrounding
how native bees inhabit and use different habitats is especially essential
now -- the National Academy of Sciences has reported that not only is there
direct evidence for decline of some pollinator species in North America,
but also very little is known about the status and health of most of the
world's wild pollinators. Yet without them, the ability of agricultural
crops and wild plants to produce food products and seeds is jeopardized.</font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">"The issues facing honeybees
introduced pollinators whose populations are spiraling downward, means
that it is even more vital to understand the role of native bees as pollinators
and how they divide up and use a landscape," said Grundel.</font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Many studies have been conducted
to determine how a variety of animals – birds, mammals, and reptiles,
for example – use their native landscapes, but few such studies have been
undertaken for native bees. “That’s why this type of study is fundamental
for enhancing our understanding of native bee distribution,” Grundel said.
“Our research findings clearly reveal that maintenance of a diverse and
abundant bee community requires that managers consider a suite of local
and landscape characteristics and management actions.”</font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Grundel and his colleagues wanted
to find out if the kinds of plants that live in different habitats can
predict what kinds of bees will be there or if other factors – such as
soil type, tree density or even fire -- are more important. To do this,
the team surveyed landscapes and collected and identified nearly 5,000
native bees representing at least 175 species in five kinds of habitats
at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and nearby natural areas around northwestern
Indiana. These habitats ranged from dense forests to open fields.</font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">"We had suspected that the
closer our collecting sites were to each other the more similar the bees
communities we found would be – but we were wrong," Grundel said.
"In fact, mere physical proximity wasn't a very good predictor of
how similar bee communities at different sites would be to each other.
Instead, local factors – and even the micro-habitats that we often ignore
– are really important in determining what kinds of bees use an area."</font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Because many native bees are ground-
and cavity-nesters, the scientists weren’t surprised to find that an abundant
supply of dead wood, such as woody debris and dead tree limbs, was essential
in determining what kinds of bees lived where. They were surprised, however,
at how important other factors were, including bee preferences for specific
soil characteristics and for areas that had burned in the previous two
years.</font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Bee abundance – how <i>many</i>
bees were captured at a site – was lower in areas with a dense tree canopy
and higher if a fire had occurred recently in the area. Bee diversity –
the number of different <i>kinds </i>of bees – was higher in areas with
less tree canopy, but with a higher diversity of flowering plants <i>and</i>
an abundance of nesting resources, such as woody debris.</font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">The presence of suitable nesting
material was at least as important in determining how many types of bees
might use a site as was diversity of plants, which provide nectar and pollen
to the bees. The composition of an entire bee community was linked to higher
plant variety, less canopy cover and soil characteristics that may be best-suited
for nesting.</font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">The study found that specialist
bees – those picky native bees that gather pollen from only a few kinds
of plants – were more likely to live in open areas than areas with a higher
density of trees.</font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">"Specialist bees, not surprisingly,
were also more associated with the presence of native plants in the areas,
but a lot of these native plants were more likely to occur in disturbed
areas, including areas that had recently been burned and, somewhat to our
surprise, residential areas where soil disturbance is commonplace,"
Grundel said.</font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">However, specialist bees were often
rarer and mainly used open habitats, such as grasslands and savannas.
According to a 2005 study, said Grundel, such open Midwest habitats are
today perhaps the most poorly conserved habitats on the planet, causing
concern about long-term conservation of such bee species.</font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">"At several locations around
the world, specialist bumblebees living in plant rich areas, such as these
open habitats, have declined significantly," Grundel said. "Similar
bumblebee declines have been documented in the Midwest U.S. Documenting
how diet breadth, rarity and habitat use are related is important for understanding
such patterns of decline and was one of the main objectives of our study.
We collected six bumblebee species in our study while a 1930s study in
this area collected twelve species. Four of the species we did not find
in our study have been identified as bumblebees of special concern due
to their disappearance from sites across the Midwest."</font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">USGS researchers in Indiana and
Maryland are following up on this research with a recently initiated study
examining how native bee populations across the national park system might
be affected by climatic variation.</font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">The paper, <i>Floral and nesting
resources, habitat structure, and fire influence bee distribution across
an open-forest gradient,</i> was published in <i>Ecological Applications</i>
and may be read </font><a href=http://www.glsc.usgs.gov/_files/publications/1564.pdf><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><u>online</u></font></a><a href=http://www.glsc.usgs.gov/_files/publications/1564.pdf></a><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">.
Primary authors are Ralph Grundel, USGS; Robert Jean, Indiana State
University; and Krystalynn Frohnapple and Noel Pavlovic, USGS.</font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"> </font>
<p><font size=5 face="Times New Roman"><b>Photos for this release:</b></font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Visit: </font><a href=http://gallery.usgs.gov/tags/NR2011_06_21 target=_blank><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><u>http://gallery.usgs.gov/tags/NR2011_06_21</u></font></a><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">
for all available photos. </font>
<p>
<hr>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">USGS provides science for a changing
world. Visit </font><a href=http://usgs.gov/><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><u>USGS.gov</u></font></a><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">,
and follow us on Twitter </font><a href=http://twitter.com/usgs><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><u>@USGS</u></font></a><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">
and our other </font><a href=http://usgs.gov/socialmedia><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><u>social
media channels</u></font></a><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">.<br>
Subscribe to our news releases via </font><a href=http://usgs.gov/newsroom/list_server.asp><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><u>e-mail</u></font></a><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">,
</font><a href=http://feeds.feedburner.com/UsgsNewsroom><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><u>RSS</u></font></a><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">
or </font><a href=http://twitter.com/usgsnews><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><u>Twitter</u></font></a><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">.</font>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">Links and contacts within this release
are valid at the time of publication.</font>
<div align=center>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman">###</font></div>
<p><a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=250&pub=oc_web&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usgs.gov%2Fnewsroom%2Farticle.asp%3FID%3D2833&title=" target=_blank><img src=cid:_1_0A327C400A327840005A88EA852578B7 alt="Bookmark and Share"></a>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"> </font>
<br><font size=2 face="sans-serif">~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br>
Catherine Puckett <br>
USGS Office of Communications<br>
2201 NW 40th Terrace<br>
Gainesville, FL 32605-3574<br>
OFFICE PHONE: 352-264-3532<br>
NEW CELL PHONE: 352-278-0165<br>
FAX: 352-374-8080<br>
EMAIL: cpuckett@usgs.gov</font>
<br>