Submitted by Neil Tsutsui on
In recent years, one of the biggest concerns in entomology has been the global decline of insect diversity and abundance. Insects interact with other species in a huge variety of ways and are critical to continued ecosystem health and function. One of the most important ways insects interact with their environment is as pollinators. Declining native Hawaiian bees (Hylaeus) offer an example of a system in which pollinator conservation is critical. These bees almost exclusively visit native plants, and thus conservation of these pollinators is especially likely to have a beneficial impact on the ecosystem scale.
Effective conservation in this context is dependent on a better understanding of the causes/impacts of Hylaeus decline. One frequently proposed cause of this decline is the introduction of invasive ants. However, there is limited research specifically supporting this hypothesis. To this end, this project aims to look at interactions between invasive ants and a suite of native and non-native bee pollinators to determine what impact ants have on bee foraging behaviors.
Depending on undergraduate preference the project will consist of remote and/or in-person work. Remote work would consist of transcribing pollinator visit data from video recordings of flowers. In-person work would consist of identification/curation of collected insect specimens.
No specific requirements other than an interest in insects!