While some people spend their summers enjoying the warm weather, three CC students spent the last two and a half months in Alaska studying the effects of climate change on the plant-pollinator community.
卡罗琳·博斯，22岁, 扎克·金23岁, and Luca Keon ’25 were at Toolik野外站 with about 100 other re搜索ers and students, most of whom were also focused on climate change re搜索, 说Ginn. Toolik野外站 is an international field station north of the Arctic Circle, 在阿拉斯加的北坡.
The students were conducting re搜索 for Dr. Roxaneh Khorsand, a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Organismal Biology and Ecology. 她和她的合作者. Steve Oberbauer (Florida International University) and Dr. Jeremy May (Marietta College) quantify plant physiological and reproductive responses to climate change. This re搜索 is part of the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX), a consortium of scientists that carry out long-term studies of climate change in arctic, 南极, 高山地区.
“The Arctic is warming faster than any other region on Earth. We are trying to understand the rapid ecological changes that are taking place so we can predict how this region will look in the future and what that means for energy balance and biodiversity on this planet,Khorsand说.
作为研究的一部分, 麦片汤, Ginn, and Keon use passive warming devices, 开顶室, and compare timing of flowering and insect activity in the warmed plots versus the control (un-warmed) plots. The students seek to determine how an increase in temperature affects flowering patterns, 花蜜的数量, and what type of insects interact with the plants.
A long-term goal with this re搜索 is to see if the phenology, 或者开花的时间, 温暖的植物发生了变化, 与对照组相比, 说Keon. 例如, the students wanted to observe whether the warmed plants will flower earlier in the season than the controls.
Khorsand says that a major knowledge gap is the effects of warming on biological interactions in the Artic, specifically plant-pollinator interactions. “My re搜索 aims to understand if plants and their pollinators are responding to environmental change in a synchronous manner, as well as how higher temperatures may affect floral rewards for insects and the implications for plant reproductive success.”
In addition to conducting re搜索 for Khorsand’s lab, Ginn is collecting data for his thesis on plant-pollinator networks.
As part of COVID precautions mandated by the National Science Foundation, the students were required to quarantine for eight days at a hotel in Fairbanks before being driven to the field station, about 10 hours north of Fairbanks.
This was the second summer doing re搜索 at Toolik野外站 for 麦片汤, 现在正在攻读博士学位.D. in botany at the University of Wyoming.
“I returned from my first summer at Toolik having solidified in my mind that I want to combine my interest in systematics with the love that I have for arctic plants, which was how my grad school re搜索 ideas came about,布罗斯说。. “Without the opportunity to be a re搜索 student in the Arctic for Roxaneh, I do not believe that I would be headed to graduate school this fall, and instead I would be working for at least a year trying to figure out my study system.”
一旦学年开始, Ginn and Keon will analyze hundreds of insect specimens for pollen content to determine which types of insects transport pollen most effectively.
“We have been training OBE students in the Arctic since 2019 and we continue to be impressed with their knowledge, 职业道德, and genuine passion for fieldwork,Khorsand说.