Management of Alberta's Foothills Forests: The Experiences of Bumble Bees and Their Floral Mutualists

Management of Alberta's Foothills Forests: The Experiences of Bumble Bees and Their Floral Mutualists

Presenter:    Ralph Cartar

                             Dept. Biosciences & Natural Sciences Program, University of Calgary

Date:               October 26, 2016

Time:              12 - 1pm

Location:      Conference Room ‘B’, Husky Conference Centre, Calgary, AB

                             Plus 30 level, 707-8th Avenue SW (take the escalator up two flights)

                             *Please note that we are in a different room from our usual. Instead of A, were are in room B*

Webinar:      https://albertabiology.adobeconnect.com/bumblebees/

  CCP:              This presentation entitles ASPB members to earn 1 Professional Development Hour

                            Registration is not required for this event

Description

Logging has transformed Alberta’s public forests over the last 30 years, to such an extent that it is now difficult to find old growth forests in unprotected areas further than 5 km from a cut-block.  In this talk, using examples from research of my graduate students and myself, I review some of the consequences of such widespread and intensive logging to bumble bees and the plants that they pollinate. While impacts are often determined using surveys of focal animals or their habitat requirements, I pay particular attention to the ways that logging affects (or not) the manner in which these mutualists interact in logging-modified landscapes; particularly how (mobile) bumble bees choose (sessile) flowers to visit. That is, I focus on the problem of resource-tracking in variously modified environments. I also examine the consequences of logging to sexual reproduction of flowering forbes, particularly those remaining in old growth remnants. My take-home message is that to protect and enhance mutualistic associations of native bumble bees and the native flowers that they pollinate in Alberta’s public forests, we should protect large tracts of old growth forest that are distant from cut-blocks.

 Biography 

Dr. Ralph Cartar is a behavioural ecologist trained at the University of Toronto (BSc), Queen’s University (MSc), Simon Fraser University (PhD), the Australian Museum (Postdoc), and the University of Manitoba (Postdoc). For the past twenty years, Ralph has been employed in the Biology Departments of the Universities of Lethbridge and Calgary. Ralph has studied the ecology of bumble bees for more than 30 years, and the students in his lab have contributed research on ecology of bee pollinators in the lab and in many of Alberta’s iconic ecosystems (foothills forest, rough fescue prairie, canola-dominated agriculture). He will feature some of the forest-focused research in this talk.

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The ASPB is not responsible for the content of this presentation; the information and views expressed by the presenter(s) are their own.