2024 Dec 12 Meeting – 2024 O’Neill Grant Awardees Research

December Public Meeting
2024 O’Neill Grant Awardees Present their Research 

Matthew Yamamoto:
McGee Creek watershed on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada

Jen Schlauch Saiyawong:
How bee communities respond to disturbance in California coastal wetlands

Thursday December 12
7:15 Pre-Chat     7:30 Meeting Begins
Via Zoom – Register for this Event Here

  Jen Schlauch Saiyawong

BIO

Originally from the coastal bayous of Houston, Texas, Jen is a PhD student and NSF graduate research fellow in Dr. Hammer’s Lab at the University of California, Irvine, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department. Her thesis focuses on the native bee communities of wetlands, and the factors that shape bee microbiomes. Academically, she is interested in plant-pollinator interactions, community ecology, and biodiversity conservation. She aims for all of her work to be centered around curiosity-driven science communication– through outreach, education, mentorship, and art.

TALK SUMMARY

Plant-pollinator networks provide valuable ecosystem services through the intricate connections between the pollinators and their flowers. Bees, a critical group of pollinators in most habitats, have seen a decline in the last few decades due to a number of human-caused, interconnected factors. The introduction and establishment of nonnative plants is one such threat. Research studying the effect of nonnative plants on the native plant-pollinator network have yielded mixed results, and are often focused on a single group or species in the network. There is an urgent need for community-level studies to better assess and predict the impact of nonnative plants on bees. By using a standardized monitoring protocol that includes human net-collection and passive trapping of bees, as well as observations of the flower community, I hope to contribute to our understanding of how bee communities respond to disturbance. I focus on California’s highly-modified coastal wetlands, surveying the bees and plants along transects at 8 sites from San Diego to Sonoma County. So far, we have found that bees forage extensively on introduced flowering species, suggesting that nonnative plants may actually be providing critical food sources in resource-scarce habitats. While this work is still in progress, ultimately, this project aims to provide land managers with site-specific bee species lists, as well as management recommendations on how to promote healthy pollinator communities.

   Matthew Yamamoto

BIO

Originally from San Francisco, Matthew first became interested in botany while hiking and camping in the Bay Area. Matthew left California to obtain a bachelor’s degree in botany from Connecticut College but spent his summers as an undergraduate on vegetation management crews in Rocky Mountain National Park and Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Through these summers, Matthew became convinced of the need for more research in high elevation mountain ecosystems, which he is now carrying out as a master’s student at California Botanic Garden.

TALK SUMMARY

What do botanists mean when they say that much of California is still botanically under-documented? While the McGee Creek watershed on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada (Mono County) is a popular place for hiking and wildflower viewing, the first of two summers of fieldwork has revealed well over a hundred species of plants that were not previously known to occur there. After introducing the watershed and its plant communities, I will discuss some of the surprising finds from this summer’s surveys, including range extensions, countless new populations of rare plants, and plants not previously known to occur in Mono County. I will end by briefly discussing the relevance of floristic studies like these for plant research and conservation.