Hauling field gear up Gothic Mountain…
This renewal research application covers three distinct but related projects, all focused on pollination networks, their responses to perturbation, and the relationship between their structure and function. The first project, ?Quantitative Network Structure and Function? has two primary objectives: A) accurately measuring of quantitative network structure (i.e. intensity of interactions) with a focus on testing predictions about quantitative structure from theoretical work we are leading; and B) comparing network structure and function (seed production across multiple plant species) in drought (2018, 2020, 2021, potential future years) vs. non-drought years (2016, 2017, 2019, potential future years). The second project, ?Snowmelt Acceleration and Pollination Network Structure and Function?, is focused on temporally shuffling interaction partners in pollination networks via medium-scale (10 x 14 m) snowmelt acceleration experiments that are controlled and spatially replicated. The temporal re-shuffling occurs via changes in plant flowering phenology in manipulated patches, whereas we expect the pollinator community to remain relatively unchanged given that the scale of movement of individual pollinators is typically much larger than the spatial scale of our plots. The third project, ?Understanding Pollinator Functional Responses and Benefit Accrual Under Perturbation? is focused on improving the integration between models and empirical data in pollination networks. In particular, this work will for the first time empirically estimate the functional forms of 1) multi-species pollinator functional responses, i.e. how pollinator visitation changes with plant density, as well as plant and pollinator species identity; and 2) the numerical response (reproductive benefit accrual) of plants with respect to pollinator visits, i.e. how fecundity changes with pollinator visit frequency change. The benefit accrual component will involve new experiments focused on plant seed set. These empirically validated functional forms will then be incorporated into models, which we will subsequently test by conducting short-term perturbation experiments, in a full modeling-empirical cycle.