Aquatic insects play many critical ecological roles in their environments. Anthropogenic changes in these environments, particularly those already under stress, leave the insect community more prone to stochastic disturbances. Despite widespread efforts by conservationists, many projects fail to inc

Mountain White-crowned Sparrows and Wilson’s Warblers rely on foraging microhabitats in montane wet meadows during the breeding season to find food for themselves and their offspring. The microhabitats are comprised of vegetation, which can be food itself, but it can also be a substrate for inverteb

The carbon balance of a system is particularly sensitive to water availability because carbon availability drives both the mechanisms of photosynthesis and decomposition (Huxman et al. 2004 b, Ignace et al. 2007). The carbon balance of terrestrial plants is mainly a function of (i) carbon fixation t

The Mexican Cut Nature Preserve supports diverse populations of caddisflies (Limnephilus externus), whose larvae construct protective cases from environmental debris. Case morphology varies with ecological pressures, but gaps remain in understanding how intra- and interspecific interactions influenc

The Colorado Rocky Mountains are uniquely heterogeneous, with beaver-engineered wetlands being sites with especially high relative biodiversity. Despite the large body of research available on the impacts of beaver activity on wetlands, the specific mechanisms of beaver activity that create high pla

Predator prey interactions are essential components of ecosystems, especially in lower trophic levels as they fuel many other organisms. Many prey organisms have developed tactics to decrease the rate of predation. For example, larval caddisflies build cases out of sedge and other detritus in their

Mutualistic interactions between ants and plants are common. Understanding the effects on ants with different variables can denote what influences the ant abundance. As an observational study, I censused all 10 sites four times in a two week period reporting the number of flowering stalks, the numbe

Subalpine plant species rely on water from snowmelt and monsoons to sustain them through the summer. However, climate change is causing the snow to melt earlier which creates a drought period in June prior to the monsoons and may cause plants to become drought stressed. In order to assess the effect

Climate change has led to increasingly warm temperatures, which has caused the earlier snowmelt. This has caused shifts in timing of some plants' growing season and flowering, as well as pollinator emergence. On the other hand, Various pollinators respond to cues such as soil temperature which does

The role of plant-pollinator interactions is essential for successful plant and pollinator reproduction, thus influencing community assembly of both plants and animals within an ecosystem. Pollinators exhibit competitive behavior in order to collect adequate quantities of pollen and nectar, and bees

As temperatures warm, the climate crisis is having a significant influence on species all across the world and altering their distributions. Colorado's high elevation ponds have recently observed a species range shift, traveling to higher altitudes than they have previously inhabited. The Mexican Cu