The 2005 ESA Annual Meeting and Exhibition
December 15-18, 2005
Ft. Lauderdale, FL

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Friday, December 16, 2005 - 10:06 AM
0398

Predictable pollinator patterns: A study of native California bees in an urban environment

Victoria Wojcik, vwojcik@berkeley.edu1, Gordon W. Frankie, frankie@nature.berkeley.edu2, Robbin W. Thorp, rwthorp@ucdavis.edu3, and Jennifer Hernandez, jhernandez@berkeley.edu1. (1) University of California, Berkeley, Environmental Science, Policy and Management, 137 Wellman Hall, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, (2) Univ. of California, Dept. of Environmental Sciences, Berkeley, CA, (3) University of California, Department of Entomology, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA

In 2004, an intensive study was conducted cataloguing the bees visiting a constructed bee-friendly habitat in urban-residential Berkeley, California at the UC Berkeley Oxford Tract Garden. The results of this study were analyzed for patters of seasonality and flora usage and constancy. The goal of this work is to determine if the bees making use of this urban habitat exhibit structure and seasonal predictability as they would in wildland habitats. The results show that urban bees exhibit structure in their floral usage as well as distinct seasonal patterns. Urban habitats are not used in a hap-hazard manner by foraging bees: there is structure, consistency and predictability in these garden ecosystems. Further studies will be conducted comparing the local level and landscape level factors that influence bee-plant community structure in the following season.


Keywords: Seasonality, Plant-Insect Interactions

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