Urbanization acts as a major driver of environmental change and is increasing rapidly on the global scale. This is especially so in desert areas, yet it is unknown how urbanization will have an effect on organismal communities in desert landscapes. Due to anthropogenic water usage in urban areas, it is expected that a larger amount of evaporative cooling will occur in the early day in desert remnants within Albuquerque city limits, which will lead to cooler morning temperatures. Urban Heat Island effects (UHI) will also create higher temperatures in the evening as adjacent impervious surfaces hold heat much longer than natural surfaces. We hypothesize that bee pollination networks in urban-adjacent desert remnants will be affected by evaporative cooling and UHI effects by shifting the identities and traits of these populations. Traits of interest include foraging style, nesting style, and body size.
Results/Conclusions
We have found that differences between urban and wildland abiotic conditions match those expected. Urban temperatures were slightly cooler during the day (Urban: 29.19 ± 0.15˚C Standard Error (SE), Wildland: 30.31 ± 0.14˚C SE) and significantly hotter at night than wildlands (Urban: 24.26 ± 0.07˚C SE, Wildland: 22.48 ± 0.08˚C SE). Similarly, we recorded urban sites as being more humid during the day compared to wildlands (Urban: 36.10 ± 0.14% Relative Humidity (RH) SE, Wildland: 31.10 ± 0.32%RH SE), and less humid at night (Urban: 39.74 ± 0.29%RH SE, Wildland: 46.56 ± 0.35%RH SE). A non-metric multidimensional scaling test has shown that morphospecies composition of wildland and urban bee communities are not significantly different (p= 0.483), but this may not be the case when our samples are identified to species. Preliminary findings also show a trend towards larger bee body sizes in urban areas (2548.92 ± 485.72 µm SE) compared to wildland sites (1773.01 ± 246.96 µm SE). Once bees have been identified to species, we will be able to assess foraging and nesting styles, as well as other life-history traits.