[Pollinator] Official Release

Thu Jan 5 09:40:36 PST 2017

Dear Family and Colleagues:
Saint Louis University sent out a press release of our published study on
birds foot violet and its warm petals this morning.  Here is the article
that went into our daily newslink circulated on campus.  However, it looks
like other versions will appear on line.  I'd like you to see this version
first as Retha and I revised it after we sent information on to SLU Media
staff writer, Jeanetter Grider.  Other news outlets will cut this
information down to fit sacrificing accuracy. It's important to us that the
Shaw Nature Reserve and Cuivre River State receives credit and exposure for
their support of our fieldwork over three years.
Peter
Home <https://www.slu.edu/> » News <https://www.slu.edu/news/> » 2017
<https://www.slu.edu/news/2017/> » January
<https://www.slu.edu/news/2017/january/> » SLU Scientists Discover Bees
Prefer Warm Violets in Cool Forests
SLU Scientists Discover Bees Prefer Warm Violets in Cool Forests

Research by scientists at Saint Louis University’s Bernhardt/Meier
Laboratory engaged in a study of Missouri bees and wildflowers has been
published in the online “Journal of Pollination Ecology.”
[image: bees]

Bees prefer to forage upside down on these flowers so their hind legs and
bee butts are warmed by the dark petals as they drink nectar and collect
pollen. *Photo by Zong-Xin Ren*

Peter Bernhardt, Ph.D., a professor of biology at SLU and research
associate at the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Royal Botanic Gardens
and Domain Trust in Sydney, New South Wales, has been studying reproductive
patterns in wildflowers in six countries for more than 40 years and, like
most dedicated scientists, thrives on new discoveries such as how bees
respond to the color of the flowers they pollinate.

"Remember how you were told that a dark coat keeps you a little warmer on a
cold but sunny day?” Bernhardt said. “Some plants blooming in chilly
environments have dark purple or almost black patches on their flowers to
keep cold-blooded insects toasty warm as they pollinate."

Bernhardt said three years of research at their lab, with field work at
Missouri’s Cuivre River State Park and the Shaw Nature Reserve (owned by
the Missouri Botanical Garden) illustrate a new side to this colorful tale
in the online journal.

The birds foot violet (Viola pedata) has two, common, color forms when it
blooms during the cool, Missouri, April. The concolor form makes flowers
with five light violet-mauve petals. The flower of a bicolor plant has
three mauve petals plus two top petals that are a deep, dark, funereal
purple.

Co-researcher Retha Edens-Meier, Ph.D., a professor and research scientist
in SLU’s School of Education, using thermocouples, and a hypodermic tissue
probe, learned that these dark petals are up to 3 degrees Celsius (5.4
degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the surrounding atmosphere when they stand
in a pool of Spring sunlight. Bees, especially fuzzy females of Carlin’s
bee (Andrena carlinii), prefer to forage upside down on these flowers so
their hind legs and bee butts are warmed by the dark petals as they drink
nectar and collect pollen.

Click here <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=190rBkdvVXE> to view a video by
Retha Edens-Meier, Ph.D., of a native bee standing on her head to forage
while clinging to the dark petals.

“What is so unusual about these findings is that, when given a choice over
two years, native bees preferred to forage on the concolor form so concolor
flowers made more seeds compared to bicolors,” said Bernhardt.

Comparing violet populations, at two isolated sites, the research team
noted that when the plants grew in a sunny, open, limestone glade (Shaw
Nature Reserve) the concolors outnumbered the bicolors by 40 to one. It was
very different on the shady forested slope at Cuivre River State Park where
bicolors and concolors occurred in almost equal numbers or bicolors
outnumbered concolors by almost two-to-one in one season. As pools of light
shifted over the course of the day under the trees in the cooler forest,
cold-blooded bees visited the bicolors more frequently, possibly because of
the warmth provided by the darker petals.

Edens-Meier also says that these studies provide us with a fresh insight
into how such tiny wild flowers continue to thrive and reproduce.

“Bird’s-foot violets have an unusually broad distribution from eastern
Canada through at least 30 American states. Research on these botanical
beauties reveals interesting information valuable to ecologists,
conservationists, and the general public,” Edens-Meier said. “Although
bird’s-foot violets are not endangered within the United States plenty of
other plant species are in significant decline.”

“Our goals are to investigate plant breeding systems and pollination
ecology, especially in rare and threatened plants. As climate change
continues to be responsible for out-of-sync bee emergence with flowering
periods and bee-specific pollination events, pollination ecology has become
an ever-increasing valuable field of study that helps us understand the
ecological impact of these environmental changes. Through research and
education, we can attempt to save our threatened organisms, one species at
a time,” Edens-Meier added.

Researchers on this study included Peter Bernhardt, Ph.D., Retha
Edens-Meier, Ph.D, and Gerardo Camilo, Ph. D, of Saint Louis University as
well as Dowen Jocson (now a Masters student at Saint Louis University.),
Justin Zweck (Ph.D. student in the Bernhardt/Meier lab), Dr. Zong-Xin Ren
(Kunming Institute of Botany, Yunnan, China) and Dr. Michael Arduser.
(Missouri Department of Conservation, retired).

Click here
<http://www.pollinationecology.org/index.php?journal=jpe&page=article&op=view&path[]=403>
to
read the full Journal of Pollination Ecology story.

For additional information, contact Peter Bernhardt at (314) 977-7152 or
bernhap2 at slu.edu <bernhap2 at slu.edu?subject=>.
Higher purpose. Greater good.

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