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Interactions of Wild Bees with Landscape, Farm Vegetation, and Flower Pollen

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Interactions of Wild Bees with Landscape, Farm Vegetation, and Flower Pollen WILD BEE SPECIES RICHNESS ON NORTH CENTRAL FLORIDA PRODUCE FARMS: INTERACTIONS OF WILD BEES WITH LANDSCAPE, FARM VEGETATION, AND FLOWER POLLEN By ROSALYN DENISE JOHNSON A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2016 © 2016 Rosalyn Denise Johnson To my family and friends who have supported me through this process ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To Rose and Robert, Rhonda and Joe, and Katherine and Matthew without whose encouragement and support I could not have done this. I am grateful to my co- advisors, Kathryn E. Sieving and H. Glenn Hall, and my committee, Rosalie L. Koenig, Emilio M. Bruna III, David M. Jarzen, and Mark E. Hostetler for the opportunity to contribute to the knowledge of wild bees with their expert guidance. I would also like to thank the farmers who allowed me to work on their land and my assistants Michael Commander, Amber Pcolka, Megan Rasmussen, Teresa Burlingame, Julie Perreau, Amanda Heh, Kristen McWilliams, Matthew Zwerling, Mandie Carr, Hope Woods, and Mike King for their hard work 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ 7 LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... 8 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... 13 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO WILD BEE SPECIES RICHNESS AND POLLEN MOVEMENT IN NORTH CENTRAL FLORIDA ....................................................... 15 2 FARM AND LANDSCAPE FACTORS INFLUENCING WILD BEE DIVERSITY ON NORTH FLORIDA PRODUCE FARMS ............................................................ 18 Summary ................................................................................................................ 18 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 19 Background ...................................................................................................... 19 Research Objectives ........................................................................................ 22 Methods .................................................................................................................. 24 Farming System and Species ........................................................................... 24 Study Design .................................................................................................... 26 Bee Species Richness Assessment ................................................................. 27 Vegetation and Landscape Assessment .......................................................... 28 Data Analysis ................................................................................................... 30 Results .................................................................................................................... 33 Bee Species Richness ..................................................................................... 33 Vegetation and Landscape Assessment .......................................................... 34 Discussion .............................................................................................................. 37 Plant And Bee Species Richness In Farm Fields ............................................. 37 A Signal From The Mesohabitat Scale ............................................................. 38 3 POLLEN COLLECTION BY WILD BEES ON PRODUCE FARMS IN NORTH- CENTRAL FLORIDA............................................................................................... 60 Summary ................................................................................................................ 60 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 61 Methods .................................................................................................................. 62 Study System and Strategy .............................................................................. 62 Bee Collection .................................................................................................. 63 Pollen Preparation, Photography, and Counts ................................................. 64 Analytical Methods ........................................................................................... 66 Results .................................................................................................................... 67 5 Vegetation ........................................................................................................ 67 Bees ................................................................................................................. 68 Pollen samples ................................................................................................. 68 Discussion .............................................................................................................. 69 How Many Wild Bees Carried Pollen? .............................................................. 69 Crop Pollen Carriers ......................................................................................... 70 Non-Crop Pollen Carriers ................................................................................. 71 Management Perspectives and Future Directions ............................................ 73 4 ANNOTATED, ILLUSTRATED CHECKLIST OF POLLEN–CARRYING WILD BEES OF NORTH-CENTRAL FLORIDA PRODUCE FARMS ................................ 87 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 87 Methods .................................................................................................................. 87 Results .................................................................................................................... 88 5 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ..................................................... 147 APPENDIX: FLORIDA NATURAL AREAS INVENTORY ........................................... 149 LIST OF REFERENCES ............................................................................................. 151 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................... 160 6 LIST OF TABLES Table page 2-1 Several characteristics describing management practices of the study farms. Numbers represent farms. Figure 2-1 for farm placement. ................................. 43 2-2 Variables at micro- meso- and microhabitat scales. Data were collected from farms on 2011 and 2012 or from the Florida Natural Areas Inventory Cooperative Land Cover Map (2010). .............................................................. 44 2-3 Bee Individuals Collected By Species and Farm. ............................................... 46 2-4 Principal component loadings in relation to original landscape variables. Loadings indicate a principal component score above 0.5. ................................ 50 2-5 General linear mixed model output showing factors tested for relationships with Chao2 bee species richness. Error was computed using the Satterthwaite method in Statistica (Academic v.12; 2015). ................................. 51 3-1 Management characteristics of the ten study farms (1-10) on which pollen- carrying bees were colected. Farms were all irrigated with low to no pesticide use. ..................................................................................................................... 75 3-2 Family and species of wild bees caught carrying pollen on produce farms and the morphospecies of pollen (raw counts) they carried. ..................................... 76 4-1 Family, genus, and species of wild bees that were carrying pollen on produce farms. ................................................................................................................. 89 A-1 Defined land covers from the Florida Natural Areas Inventory and data categories. ........................................................................................................ 149 7 LIST OF FIGURES Figure page 2-1 Bee study farm locations in North-central Florida, USA. Circles represent 500 m buffers (out to 3 km) around the farm fields that were sampled for wild bees. ................................................................................................................... 52 2-2 Layout for bee bowl and vegetation sampling on a produce farm. Nine bee bowls were primed for capture, three by each of the three quadrats (i.e., one meter sampling circles) in blooming crops. ......................................................... 53 2-3 Mean species counts from four sampling periods with bars showing standard error. Sampling periods 1 and 3 were March/April 2011 and 2012 respectively......................................................................................................... 54 2-4 Species accumulation curves for cumulative raw bee counts on ten farms (farm ID in legend at right). ................................................................................. 55 2-5 Wild bee species rarefaction
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