NSF Hawai`i EPSCoR II
Ecosystem Response to Environmental Change Focus Area

Pollination Webs: Building Ecological Infrastructure in Hawai`i for the Study of Community Structure and Function

Coordinators:

Staff:

  • Heather Sahli (Postdoctoral Fellow)
  • Pat Aldrich (Research Assistant)
  • Michelle Elmore (Research Assistant)
  • Katherine Doherty (Lab. Assistant)

Participants:

  • Paul Banko (USGS PIERC)
  • Sheila Conant (UHM Zoology)
  • Susan Cordell (U.S. Forest Service)
  • Curt Daehler (UHM Botany)
  • Julie Denslow (U.S. Forest Service)
  • Stuart Donachie (UHM Microbiology)
  • Neal Evenhuis (Bishop Museum)
  • Frank Howarth (Bishop Museum)
  • Terry Hunt (UHM Anthropology)
  • Jack Jeffrey (U.S. Fish & Wildlife Svc.)
  • Rhonda Loh (Nat. Park Service)
  • William Mautz (UHH Biology)
  • Cliff Morden (UHM Botany)
  • Angela Nishimoto (Leeward CC)
  • Becky Ostertag (UHH Biology)
  • Bob Peck (USGS HCSU)
  • Linda Pratt (USGS PIERC)
  • Thane Pratt (USGS PIERC)
  • Jon Price (USGS HCSU)
  • Dan Rubinoff (UHM PEPS)
  • Fred Stone (Hawai`i CC)

 

Project Summary

Species interactions are a key to understanding the generation, maintenance, and conservation of biodiversity. Terrestrial communities in Hawai‘i have great potential for the study of these interactions, and thus community structure and function, through investigation of their responses to the dramatic and unambiguous environmental gradients across the islands. However, this potential has not been fully utilized. For instance, the most recent studies of trophic interactions in Hawai‘i have been limited in either the kinds of interactions considered or the resolution of the interactions. A major impediment to more comprehensive studies of trophic interactions in Hawai‘i is the lack of adequate research infrastructure, particularly for coping with the biodiversity that constitutes these interaction webs.

In this project, we are building research infrastructure to make use of the excellent opportunities that Hawai‘i’s biota and environments offer for studying diverse questions about the structure and function of ecological communities. We will focus on Hawai‘i’s pollination webs (the complex network of interactions among plants and their pollinators), because of their great theoretical and practical importance, and because understanding pollination systems is critical step toward understanding the community ecology of any terrestrial ecosystem.

In order to build strong infrastructure, we are developing

  • carefully selected research sites along environmental gradients across the archipelago,
  • a multi-institutional network of taxonomic experts, particularly on diverse insect pollinators,
  • standardized pollination-web databases and interactive keys accessible to an interdisciplinary group of researchers, and
  • a practical, standard protocol for collecting and analyzing pollination web data.

We also are undertaking field studies which will comprehensively describe and quantify the web of interactions between plants and pollinators in various ecosystems, and lead directly to further, testable hypotheses regarding community structure and function.

This combination of accomplished research, informational support, long-term
interdisciplinary collaboration, and research infrastructure will not only facilitate and encourage research on pollination systems, it will provide a foundation from which to extend research into other trophic interactions and community ecology more generally in Hawai‘i. In combination with other EPSCoR projects, it will help make Hawai‘i the kind of prime site for community ecology that it already is for ecosystem ecology and evolutionary biology.