The power of pollen
The interconnectedness of nature teaches us that the tugging of a single thread can alter a landscape. Once that occurs, how can we reweave the tapestries of our landscapes? When everything depends on everything else, where does one even begin?
Anthony Vaudo approaches his research from a “bee’s-eye” perspective with a focus on the impacts of pollen nutrition in bee and plant community interactions. He and a team of researchers, resource specialists, and land managers are working to develop seed mixes and revegetation methods that benefit pollinators and old growth forests in key watersheds in the Oregon Coast Range. The team uses a holistic approach that recognizes plant-pollinator interdependence and builds on these relationships in a changing climate environment.
A biological scientist with the USDA Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station, Vaudo’s recent publication describes bee species’ host plant preferences, and how patterns in pollen proteins and lipids might predict which types of bees plant communities will attract. “This has exciting implications for future restoration research,” Vaudo said. “We can design a project with nutritionally diverse plants that attract more bees and a greater diversity of bees.” Diverse pollinator communities are more resilient and stable, and Vaudo sees this as a sustainable way to support landscapes. The work builds on the Suislaw National Forest’s Pollinators Across Landscapes effort to restore pollinator-friendly understory plants after commercial thinning. Vaudo and the team will collaborate with the Suislaw National Forest and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde nursery to study the pollination ecology of early blooming fruits and berries that are culturally and ecologically important, and to build the nursery’s capacity to produce native seeds and seedlings for use in restoration.
Vaudo explained that the team will consider plant quality from the perspective of pollinators the plant will depend on, and reciprocal ways the plants will benefit. “In the past we’ve thought of plant pollen nutrition as static,” he said. “We haven’t studied the things that might change the quality of pollen nutrition rewards.”
Plant health impacts the quality of pollen and nectar, and plant health depends on soil quality, growing conditions, and environmental stressors. In another recent publication, Vaudo investigated these factors to determine which environmental changes may impact pollen quality in a way that would also affect bee performance. Rising temperatures and drought may affect plant biochemistry. Understanding how native plants respond to climate change and understanding how pollinators respond to these changes will be paramount to the success of the project, Vaudo said.
In what he calls a “soil-to-plant-to-bee-and-back circle,” Vaudo and the team will test biochar to improve soil and plant health, improve plant health to improve bee nutrition, improve pollination services to increase resilience, and so on. He believes this holistic approach will lead to more innovative research. “To be able to connect with this entire national Forest Service network and see this work in use is exciting,” he said.