Temperature and Pollination in Greenland

Christine Urbanowicz, Ph.D. Student, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Christine Urbanowicz studies the pollinators and plant-pollinator interactions that are beneficial for flowing plants in Greenland's tundra ecosystem. She is interested in how variation in plant density and temperature influence the number of pollinators that visit flowers and the number of fruits a plant produces. She is also collecting data on parasites of bumblebees in Greenland.

In 2013, Christine counted the numbers of insects visiting flowers in six sites around Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, that were subjected to different wind conditions. She collected and identified insects at these sites, and collected and identified pollen off their bodies to determine the plants that each insect visits.

During the summer of 2014, Christine is determining how variation in temperature in Kangerlussuaq affects the pollination and fruit set of blueberry as well as a few other plants. Climate change is expected to cause drastic changes in vegetation in Greenland, and many of these changes will be mediated by the availability and composition of pollinators.