Prairie Biotic Research, Inc.
2010 Grant Proposal Form
Instructions
1. Only proposals using this form will be considered.
2. Mail eleven hard copies to: Prairie Biotic Research, 831 Ridgewood Ave., Ames, IA 50010.
Your proposal must be received through the mail by January 9, 2010. PBR will acknowledge
receipt of your proposal by email.
3. Please do NOT:
 Submit your proposal by email.
 Reformat this Proposal Form (e.g., alter font size) or exceed the allotted three pages.
 Submit more than one proposal per person.
 Submit a proposal if you received PBR Small Grants Program funding in 2009.
 Include supplemental attachments.
 Contact PBR to determine the status of your proposal. All participants will be notified by
March 15, 2010, whether or not they will be awarded funding.
I. Applicant Information
Date of Proposal January 4, 2010
Researcher Name Scott Chamberlain
Affiliation (if applicable) Rice University
Address _EEB Dept. Rice Univ. 6100 Main St., MS-170 City _Houston State TX Zip 77006___
Phone _707-889-32636_ Fax _713-348-5232__ Email address __schamber@rice.edu_________
How did you learn of PBR’s Small Grants Program?
ECOLOG listserv.
II. Project Information
Project Title Pollinator communities of crop and wild sunflowers
Amount Requested (not to exceed $1,000) $896.41.
Start Date (month, year) April, 2010
Completion Date (month, year) October, 2010
Project Summary (50 words or less)
Wild sunflowers occur adjacent to cultivated sunflowers throughout much of the sunflower growing
region in the USA. I will reveal the altered structure of pollinator communities visiting crop and
wild sunflowers due to adjacent cultivated sunflowers, thus informing conservation of rare plants, as
well as crop weeds, adjacent to farms.
Prairie Biotic Research, Inc. 2010 Grant Proposal
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III. The Proposal
A. Researcher Qualifications
Briefly describe your qualifications for conducting this project, including relevant current and past
activities.
I have conducted ecological research for eight years in a diverse array of ecosystems, and with
many different study systems. I have conducted studies on pollination biology and ecological
communities in four different systems. First, I was an undergraduate research assistant documenting
spatio-temporal changes in community structure of ground-dwelling beetles in restored and remnant
riparian forest sites in California. Second, my undergraduate advisor and I published a paper in
which we described the autecology of a native geophyte, Triteleia laxa, in California oak
woodlands, and then some aspects of the pollination biology of the species in a second paper. Third,
as part of my master’s degree, I co-authored four papers on aspects of pollination biology in a
columnar cactus, Pachycereus schottii, in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and Mexico. Fourth, I am
the lead author on a manuscript that addresses potential trade-offs or synergies among traits
attracting pollinators, and traits attracting ant bodyguards within one Gossypium (cotton) species,
and across the entire Gossypium genus. Throughout these research projects I have learned many
skills required for conducting successful research on pollination, pollinators, and community
ecology. I have learned how to rigorously research the quality and quantity of pollinator visits to
flowers, and how these relate to components of plant performance. Furthermore, I have learned how
to identify species of many groups of pollinators, including bees, flies, butterflies, and beetles. I
have gained skills to analyze data to answer questions about community ecology, which are
essential in the proposed research. These analyses are often ordination techniques, such as nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMS), or analysis of similarities (ANOSIM).
I believe I have gained the skills required to successfully execute the proposed research, and
my publication record (see: http://sites.google.com/site/scottcahamberlainorg1/Home/publications)
is testament to my capability to successfully publish my research in peer-reviewed journals.
B. Budget
Provide a project budget summary and indicate how PBR grant funds will be used. Note: PBR does
not pay for overhead, grant administration or similar costs.
Item
Source
No. of Cost per
Total
units
unit
cost
-Sweep nets
Bioquip
2
$8.40
$16.80
-Trap nests: Paper straws, 6 sizes, 1610 straws
Aardvark Straws
1
$144.41
$144.41
-Trap nests: Box of 100 screws or washers
Home Depot
6
$2.00
$12.00
-Trap nests: Large PVC, 8 in. x 4 in. ($19.86/10
Home Depot
1
$99.30
$99.30
ft.; 72 8 in. units)
-Trap nests: Wood stakes, 4 ft. tall
Home Depot
72
$1.50
$108.00
-Trap nests: Wood covers, 16 in. x 10 in.
Home Depot
3
$17.00
$51.00
plywood (8ft x 4ft sheets to make 72 units)
-Wood insect box
Bioquip
2
$40.45
$80.90
-Gasoline (800 mi roundtrip, all 12 sites *4 trips
Na
10
$38.40
$384.00
= 3200 mi; 10 tanks required for 3200 mi)
Total $896.41
Note: Reeds for trap nests will be collected in nature, so are not included in the budget. Some
materials have already been acquired, thus do not show up in the above budget.
Prairie Biotic Research, Inc. 2010 Grant Proposal
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C. Project Description
1) What do you wish to study? I will answer the question: How does close proximity of cultivated
to wild sunflowers alter pollinator communities visiting cultivated and wild sunflowers? My study
system is the cultivated Helianthus annuus, and H.a. texanus, a native subspecies of sunflower
occurring in Texas. This native, and other native, species of Helianthus occur along the borders of
sunflower crops throughout the sunflower growing regions, providing great potential for their
interactions. The genus Helianthus is visited by hundreds of pollinator species, especially bees.
2) Why is the topic important? Many crops and their wild relatives share pollinators, notably selfincompatible crops such as sunflower (Helianthus) that require animal pollination. In sunflower
growing regions in the US, crop and wild sunflowers have can overlap in flowering for 5-6 mo. each
year. A wild sunflower population flowers for months, and brackets flowering of crop sunflowers,
thousands of plants per field, that only flower for up to two weeks. Pollinator sharing may alter crop
yields as well as the ecological trajectories of wild species. Texas hosts abundant crop sunflower
acreage (~140,000 acres, 2009) and 20 native Helianthus species, many of which produce viable,
hybrid offspring with the crop. Understanding the degree to which human-altered landscapes, such as
agricultural systems, influence native ecological communities is a conservation priority. In addition,
wild plants can alter the biotic environment (e.g., pollinator communities) for crops, and increase
beneficial ecosystem services to crops (e.g., pollination). Understanding how pollinator communities
are altered due to proximity of crop and related native species will allow us to better manage pollinator
communities for conservation of wild species and for crop pollination services.
3) Describe your methodology (experimental or observational). At each of 12 sunflower crop
fields across two regions in Texas I will plant two arrays of wild sunflowers, one adjacent (within 50
m) to the sunflower crop (“near”), and the other ≥ 2.0 km (the approximate maximum distance bees
forage) away from the same crop (“far”). Each array will have 40 H.a. texanus plants. During four
visits to each site throughout the flowering season, I will identify all pollinator species visiting
sunflowers in the “near” and “far” arrays, and quantify their visitation to sunflowers. Visitation to
plants in the wild arrays will be quantified during each visit both morning and afternoon by observing
visits to each of 40 plants for 5 min during each observation period. Visitation to 40 crop sunflowers
each near the “near” wild array, and far from the “near” wild array, will be quantified during two visits
with the same methods. I will quantify “ambient” bee abundance using trap nests, which allow one to
document changes in abundance and nesting success of the subset of bees that nest in cavities. Trap
nests (artificial nests, made with either reeds or paper straws) will be set out when plants are planted,
will be monitored constantly, and used reeds or straws will be removed and the eggs inside will be
reared to determine species identity. I will use non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMS) and
analysis of similarities (ANOSIM) to ask if agricultural-wild proximity alters pollinator communities
both for wild sunflowers by comparing “near” and “far” arrays, and for cultivated sunflowers by
comparing patches sampled close to and farther from wild arrays.
4) Where will the study be done? The study will be conducted in two regions in Texas: near
Austin, and near Corpus Christi. I have contacted all necessary farmers.
5) What do you hope to learn from this research? This research will contribute greatly to our
understanding of the ecosystem services for crop food production, as well as how crops influence
pollinator communities vital to pollination of wild native plants.
6) How will the results of your research be presented to others? I will present the results of this
research in peer-reviewed journals (e.g., Ecology, Ecological Entomology), and at national (Ecological
Society of America) and regional (Texas A&M Ecological Integration Symposium) meetings.
Prairie Biotic Research, Inc. 2010 Grant Proposal
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