[Pollinator] [beemonitoring] Official Release

Fri Jan 6 17:47:36 PST 2017

Fascinating study, great press release and I love the photo and video
footage! I wonder whether similar patterns occur for some of the bicoloured
Fabaceae in WA?
Cheers,
Kit
PhD researcher and Forrest Scholar, Curtin University
On Fri, 6 Jan 2017 at 1:40 am, Peter Bernhardt bernhap2 at slu.edu
[beemonitoring] <beemonitoring-noreply at yahoogroups.com> wrote:

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> 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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> ------------------------------
>
>
> Posted by: Peter Bernhardt <bernhap2 at slu.edu>
> ------------------------------
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