Triangulating from the cairns…
Road dust has potential impacts on plant metabolism and reproduction even in small amounts. Dust is everywhere and is increasing due to human influence, this has the potential to reduce overall plant pollination worldwide. Since dust is roughly the size of a grain of pollen, it might possibly clog the stigma of plants. It appears that there is already a correlation between road dust and flower life span as well as pollination success (Mary Price personal communication 2019; Waser et al. 2017). For these reasons it is an interesting question to determine whether road dust affects nectar production in Ipomopsis aggregata. In order to explore this question, we located 30 pairs of flowering I. aggregata plants. We simulated roadside dust levels with 5 puffs of sieved dust from a garden duster to one half of the plants, while the other half received a controlled 5 puffs of normal air from another garden duster. Treatment was assigned at random within each pair. Elongated flower buds on these plants were capped with a piece of drinking straw for 21-29 hours to prevent pollinators from removing nectar. Then the nectar was collected utilizing a 10-microliter microcapillary tube, and the concentration of the nectar was measured using a refractometer. The refractometer refracts light to give a mass percentage of sucrose within nectar. To determine the mass of sugar in each sample the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics was used to convert from percentage mass to mass to percentage mass to volume. The corolla length of each flower was measured as a covariant to determine if dust affects flower size. It was found that road dust had no effect on nectar production however, there seems to be a yearly affect that influences the response to the dusting treatment. There was also found to be a correlation where corolla length and nectar volume increase, sugar mass decreases.
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