Wild bees play indispensable ecological roles in many ecosystems, yet declines in many species have been documented in recent years. These declines have been linked to numerous anthropogenic pressures, including climate change, which can influence bee populations directly (i.e., via physiological me

The summer is a peak tourism season in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, but is also the breeding season for many montane bird species, resulting in an increase in bird-human interactions and coexistence. I measured the effect that human activity has on the flight initiation behavior of two montane bird

The strength of natural selection on phenotypic traits as a result of herbivory can be measured within and among environments by quantifying spatial variation in fitness and herbivory levels in the different environments. High spatial variation among different light gradients can be expected to caus

Valerian edulis is a perennial dicot growing in montane and subalpline regions. It is a polygamo dioecious species and popular host plant for aphids. Because of such characteristics, it was chosen to study the effects of resource allocation dependency. This study examined the specific effects of aph

Pollinating bees visit flowers in order to forage for nectar and pollen, their major sources of nutrition. The plant communities that a bee interacts with vary across time and space, as different flower species dominate different habitats. One key driver of the spatial variation in plant communities

Waser et al. (2016) found that road dust consistently reduces the pollen received by Ipomopsis aggregata flowers but does not consistently reduce seed set. Over three years we tested the hypothesis that the reason undusted plants do not have higher seed sets is that more of their fruits are eaten by

Pollinator behavior is integral to understanding community network interactions. These interactions can serve as a proxy for community health. This study aims to compare the behavior between bumblebee pollinators and fly pollinators. This will take place around the area of Gothic, CO, at an elevatio

Plants are able to change volatile organic compounds in response to herbivory, and these chemicals can communicate with other parts of the same plant and with other plants. Nectar robbers like Bombus mixtus introduce a new microbial community to a flower’s nectar that is different from the one intro

The scale of influence of hydrological and thermal conditions on disease remains uncertain for most wild plant pathosystems, thus restricting our ability to predict the impacts of climate change. Analysis of the spatiotemporal spread of a fungal rust pathogen throughout four naturally occurring flax