Complete Vol. 16

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The effects of climate change on the phenology and pollination of plants is expected to be a major factor in the problem of maintaining biodiversity as well as that of feeding a growing global population.Though ecologists and agricultural researchers have historically tried to stay out of each other's domains, climate change has dealt them a globe of shared problems that will not easily be teased apart.For example, the honey bees that agriculture depends upon to pollinate crops are not native to North America.Whether those introduced pollinators help or hinder native species is a complicated problem, but they are certainly a part of the environment that researchers are going to have to study more closely as the world's population grows.Many native species and human-produced cultivars have co-evolved to depend upon or compete with each other in ways that we haven't yet discovered.We are reaching back in time to pull out some phenology and pollination data that can be compared with current data to study changes in species genomes or gene activity that might be related to climate change.Connie Taylor wrote "Pollination Ecology of Sabatia campestris" in 1972 based on data she collected while taking a summer course at the University of Oklahoma Biological Station at Lake Texoma.Written as a student research paper, its significance lies not in numerical data, but in her descriptions of pollination processes she observed in the field, which differed from those processes described from research done in green house environments.Shang-Wen Liaw was a graduate student at the University of Central Oklahoma who studied under Gloria Caddell.His 1999 Master's thesis went unpublished as he took