After going back to Akron after doing a week of data collection at Killbuck, I feel like each site has their own advantages and flaws. The first is accessibility. Akron is an hour drive and it takes about 20 minutes to hike up the trail to the area with the most abundant pollinators. Killbuck is about a 20 minutes drive and a five-minute walk to the area with the biggest natural population of Campanula. The second difference is the diversity of pollinators. At Akron, there are always a few bombus that will come to our arrays when we first get there and as the day warms up, the megachile and halictid will be swarming the arrays. At Killbuck, however, no matter what time we get there, there will be at most 2-3 bombus that will hover around the natural population of Campanula but will not actually forge on any of our plants. A plus at Akron is that whenever I go, I don’t get 20 mosquito bites but that’s beside the point.

 

 

We have been very fortunate to be able to collect data at both field sites and our data will be better supported because of that. We have a few more days of data collection at both sites before we wrap up so we will definitely take advantage of the remaining flowering plants!

-Ashley