We collected data at three sites in Washington Gulch near the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL, Gothic, Colorado, USA) from June to August 2021 and 2022. RMBL is located in the East River valley of the West Elk mountains, approximately 10 kilometers from Crested Butte, Colorado. Study site

Premise of the Research. Seed production by flowering plants depends on abiotic and biotic factors whose interacting effects may be hidden. We previously reported that exposure to dust from unpaved roads reduced the average amount of pollen on flowers of Ipomopsis aggregata, but did not consistently

In mutualistic interactions, the decision whether to cooperate or cheat depends on the relative costs and benefits of each strategy. In pollination mutualisms, secondary nectar robbing is a facultative behavior employed by a diverse array of nectar‐feeding organisms, and is thought to be a form of c

Jane E. Ogilvie,1,2* Climate change can influence consumer populations both directly, by affecting survival and repro- Sean R. Griffin,1,3 duction, and indirectly, by altering resources. However, little is known about the relative impor- Zachariah J. Gezon,1,4,5 tance of direct and indirect effects,

The interactions between floral resource phenology, bee foraging behaviour, and traits such as diet breadth, sociality, and body size are discussed and greater use of information contained in museum collections on bee phenologies and floral hosts is encouraged.

It is documented that even though individuals can switch foraging tactics, they often do not, and hypotheses of floral constancy are extended to understand when and why visitors exhibit tactic constancy and raise questions for future research.

Understanding the functional impacts of pollinator species losses on plant populations is critical given ongoing pollinator declines. Simulation models of pollination networks suggest that plant communities will be resilient to losing many or even most of the pollinator species in an ecosystem. Thes

The limitation of pollen available to pollinators and visitors alike may potentially direct pollinator visitation choice as well as the plant’s ability to provide pollen rewards, nectar rewards, and plant defense mechanisms. Such trade-offs exist in Polemonium foliosissimum A. Gray (Polemoniaceae) a

At the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory (RMBL), road dust is easily dispersed by vehicle transportation and can travel 200 meters from the road. A previous study found that road dust had an ecological impact on several species of common wildflowers at the RMBL, including scarlet gilia, Ipomopsis

Plant-pollinator networks have been shown to have a general structure that is constant across time and geographic range. However, the identities of the plants and pollinators within these networks and the ways in which they interact are highly variable. We investigated a possible mechanism for this

This study aims to explore the exciting mysteries of road dust. In the beautiful Rocky Mountains, at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in western Colorado, there is an amazing diversity of plants, but one in particular near unpaved roads is Ipomopsis aggregata, Scarlet gilia, a perennial flow

Anthropogenic climate change is causing increases in global average temperature, changes in seasonality, and altered precipitation patterns which are linked to upslope range shifts, population declines, and phenological changes. This study examines the impacts of climate induced changes in snowmelt

Flowers at high elevation must deal with less than ideal conditions, both abiotic and biotic. A limiting biotic factor plants must cope with at high elevations is pollinator limitation. With increasing elevation, insect groups such as Hymenoptera decrease with abundance whereas the abundance of Dipt

Gene flow in hybrid zones acts as a barrier to speciation, yet we still see cases in which separate hybridizing species are maintained. Selection for different floral traits at each end of a hybrid zone by pollinators and for different vegetative traits by environmental gradients are two possible so

AbstractPollination success of animal‐pollinated flowers depends on rate of pollinator visits and on pollen deposition per visit, both of which should vary with the pollen and nectar “neighborhoods” of a plant, i.e., with pollen and nectar availability in nearby plants. One determinant of these neig

Many specialist herbivores eat foods that are apparently low quality. The compensatory benefits of a poor diet may include protection from natural enemies. Several bee lineages specialize on pollen of the plant family Asteraceae, which is known to be a poor-quality food. Here we tested the hypothesi