Project Lead: Leonard Foster
Organization/Lab: Foster Lab - Michael Smith Laboratories
Summary: This project focuses on understanding how honey bees defend themselves against pathogens, particularly through hygienic behavior. It employs advanced genomic tools and selective breeding to enhance bees’ resistance to mites and bacteria, aiming to improve colony health and sustainability. The project also engages the public in discussions about honey bee biology and conservation.
Project PI: Matthew Mitchell
Organization/Lab: Mitchell Multifunctional Landscape Lab
Summary: Researchers are implementing a comprehensive monitoring plan at the UBC Farm that will help to understand how farm management affects biodiversity in agricultural and urban systems. Biodiversity, across multiple scales and levels is the foundation of agricultural productivity and contributes essential ecosystem functions and services to food systems. The UBC Farm provides a unique opportunity to monitor the biodiversity important for agroecosystem food production and other ecosystem services, with future opportunities to connect this to other socio-ecological outcomes relevant to the broader community and food systems. Long Term Biodiversity Monitoring will ensure that the diversity of life at the UBC Farm, including birds, plants, and insects, is recorded each year. This will help us understand how biodiversity at the UBC Farm is changing over time and how this affects important ecosystem services (benefits we can receive from the natural environment) that aid people, help crops grow, and contribute to overall ecosystem sustainability.
Project Lead: Juli Carillo
Organization/Lab: PIEE lab (LFS)
Summary: Spotted wing drosophila and click beetles are pests of economic concern in BC. This long-term project will monitor for spotted wing drosophila and two species of click beetles, Agriotes lineatus and Agriotes obscurus, using apple cider vinegar and pheromone traps in different landscape elements at the UBC farm. The collected data will measure fluctuations in pest abundance in different habitat elements over time to better understand the activity of these species. Data from this study will also provide long-term insect biodiversity records that will complement the UBC Farm Biodiversity monitoring program.
Project Lead: Risa Sargent
Organization/Lab: PIEE lab (LFS)
Summary: Wild bees, such as bumble bees, are important pollinators for many crops: they contribute an estimated $3 billion/year of pollination services in the US alone. Research shows that healthy and diverse wild bee communities result in higher quality pollination services to crops and wild plants. Given challenges they now face from pesticide exposure and habitat loss, it’s important that we understand how to best support their populations within the agricultural landscapes of the Lower Fraser Valley. The goal of this project is to assess the role of perennial plantings, such as hedgerows and riparian plantings, in supporting farmland wild bee populations. We expect that landscapes with a higher cover of perennial features will provide floral resources and refuge from pesticide exposure, resulting in higher colony survival and long term population success. For this project, we will place Yellow-faced Bumble bee colonies in monitorable boxes on farms—one near a hedgerow-like feature and one in an open field margin—for approximately 8 weeks. The colony boxes will be equipped with infrared cameras inside the lid (pointed at the colony from above) to monitor the colony activity remotely, as well as light and temperature sensors. Researchers will visit a site at night weekly, between the hours of 8pm and 12am, to download data from the cameras and sensors, and perform colony checks. Because bumble bees can forage up to 1.5km from their nest, researchers will also be conducting monthly floral resource and wild bee surveys on the farm, starting in late March. Between the hours of 9am and 5pm, we will measure floral abundance and diversity within various habitat types in the landscape (e.g. crop fields, forest margins, pastures, etc.). This is done non-destructively, by setting up 100m transects in each habitat type, and recording flowers in bloom at regular intervals. Researchers will always obtain permission to survey from the landowner prior to a site visit, and researchers will remain in crop field edges and tread carefully so as not to damage any crops. This project is supported by NSERC and OSC4 and is part of a broader project to assess carbon sequestration potential under perennial ecosystem restoration.
Project Contacts: Bev Ramey and Sue Kay
Organization/Lab: Nature Vancouver
Summary: : Nature Vancouver members and volunteers, plus interested public and students have conducted monthly bird surveys at UBC Farm since March 2007, to record the seasonal bird species over the year in nine different habitat areas of the Farm. The surveys encourage public awareness of birds and the biodiversity of the Farm as the monthly surveys are open to the public. All levels of birders are welcome to participate. Long term data on birds and their use of the several habitat areas of the Farm provides researchers insight into how bird use has changed with various changes to the Farm, such as planting of the biodiversity hedgerows, and changes to bird populations over time. To date, 108 species of birds have been observed at the Farm. The data compiled for each month is also publicly available on the eBird website, under the ‘hotspot’ named Vancouver—UBC south campus Farm https://ebird.org/canada/hotspot/L452312.