Dietary specialization on “toxic” or unfavorable pollens has multiple evolutionary origins in many bee families, despite such pollen being unsuitable for most generalist bee species. Pollen specialization on unsuitable pollen types must confer other evolutionary benefits; an anti-­‐parasitism functi

Plant-­‐fungal symbioses are found in ecosystems worldwide, but relatively little is known about how these two organisms affect each other. This study sought to shed light on this topic. The first experiment tested to see if the presence of an endophyte (genus Epichloë) effected the decomposition ra

The date of spring snowmelt is advancing in numerous alpine and subalpine ecosystems due to both rising temperatures and reduced snowpack associated with climate change. Snowmelt is a critical source of water for plants in subalpine ecosystems, so changes in snowmelt timing can affect many important

Global climate change can disrupt ecosystems by impacting the interactions between organisms. I investigated the impact of early snowmelt and warming on the dioecious perennial herb Valeriana edulis, as well as their indirect effects on the aphid species Aphis valerianae and the ants that tend the a

Species distribution modeling is a powerful ecological tool that combines remotely sensed data with known presence locations to yield habitat suitability predictions that can be applied to a variety of hypotheses and conservation planning efforts, and can also be used on a smaller scale to examine i

Describing and quantifying animal personality is now an integral part of behavioral studies because individually distinctive traits may have ecological and evolutionary consequences. Yet, to fully understand how personality traits may respond to selection, one must understand the underlying heritabi

Pollinators are attracted to flowers based on the sensory information they gather concerning the flower they pollinate, and decide to visit the flower, or not. Closely related plants have similar traits because of their similar genetics, and consequently will attract similar pollinators. The abundan

Due to climate change, wildflowers are blooming earlier and earlier and suffering lower reproductive success. There are two general, non-mutually-exclusive hypotheses about why this lower reproductive success may be occurring. One is that plants are blooming before their pollinators and therefore ar

Pseudomonas sp. strains 29A and 43A were originally isolated from the phyllosphere of individual plants of Cardamine cordifolia (Brassicaceae). Here, we report complete genome sequences for these two closely related strains, assembled using a hybrid approach combining Illumina paired-end reads and l

Didymosphenia geminata, a stalk-producing diatom has increased in frequency worldwide. The nuisance stalks that D. geminata forms, may create an environment preferable to oligochaetes such as Tubifex tubifex. Previous studies have shown that oligochaetes abundance is higher in areas with higher perc

To date there are few studies that have carefully studied the impact that varying pollen quantity and proportion of heterospecific pollen has on reproductive rate of a flowering plants. My project aimed to assess the relationship between pollen quantity and composition on the subalpine larkspur, Del