A Study of Insect Pollinators Associated With DoD TER-S Flowering Plants, Including Identification of Habitat Types Where They Co-Occur by Military Installation in the Southeastern United States

Abstract

Abstract : Within the past 5 to 10 years, pollinating animals and rare plants have become the focus of new programs and priorities by the Department of Defense (DoD) along with other federal land management and research agencies and Non-Government Organization (NGO) conservation and restoration organizations. Laurie Davies Adams, Executive Director of the Pollinator Partnership and Stephen Buchmann, Ph.D., North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC) Interim Coordinator for the Pollinator Partnership, were invited to present a poster paper on the importance of pollinators to Threatened, Endangered, Rare and At Risk Species (TER-S), and all flowering plants, at the annual meeting of the National Military Fish and Wildlife Association (NMFWA) meetings held in Phoenix, AZ in 2008. As a result of discussions initiated at that meeting, a DoD need was identified and the Legacy project was proposed to address it. This Phase 1 Legacy project created an integrated Excel spreadsheet database of pollinator-plant associations (floral visitors and true pollinators) for DoD threatened, endangered, and at-risk flowering plants (angiosperms) and insect pollinators. This project focused on determining the floral visitors for several hundred species of at-risk flowering plants (angiosperms) found on DoD installations in southern California, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico. Previous to this project, information had not been available, nor been synthesized by DoD personnel, USFWS, universities or private environmental contractors. The only previous study of its kind was a pollinator-related field monitoring and restoration project that was funded by Legacy in 2001 and focused on pollinators in the prairie at a site in the West. This project builds upon that concept and expanded the benefits to other military installations for pollinator specific natural resource information.