Making introductions
The location of the data collection.
What are the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, USA?
The response variable for each of the bumble bee species.
What is annual peak abundance?
The consequence of earlier snowmelt dates.
What is increasing length of floral season?
The SEM approach found these climate effects on interannual bumble bee abundances.
What are indirect?
The region expected to experience the most extreme climate changes.
What is the montane region?
The variable names used to describe floral resource abundance and timing.
What are annual floral sum and the number of floral days?
What are no significant directional trends?
This is why more is known about how climate affects plants than bees.
What is lack of long-term data on bee populations?
The model used to test the importance of direct and indirect (via floral resources) climate effects on the interannual abundance of three subalpine bumble bee species.
What is (piecewise) structural equation modeling (SEM)?
The climate variables.
What are date of snowmelt and cumulative precipitation (from May through July)?
The key driver of bumble bee abundance for all three bee species in the structural equation models.
What is the number of floral days?
The effects that have a stronger influence on bee abundance than direct climate effects.
What are the effects of climate on floral days and floral abundance?
The determinant of bumble bee population sizes for successive life stages during the flight season.
What is continuous floral resource availability (abundance of flowers used by bees)?
The names of the habitats making up the data collection sites.
What are dry meadow, Salix spp.-dominated wet meadow and Veratrum tenuipetalum-dominated wet meadow?
The resulting variation in peak abundance of the bumble bee species.
What is substantial variation?
The measure of the time available with sufficient floral resources which had a strong positive effect on the inter annual abundance of all three bee species.
What is the number of days above a lower threshold?
The (1) duration of time that bee abundance was observed and (2) the duration of time that climate and flower data was observed.
What is (1) 8 years and (2) 43 years?
The names of the bumble bee species considered in the research.
What are B. bi- farius, B. flavifrons and B. appositus?
The effect on abundance of all three bee species by the number of low floral days.
What is negative?
One of the caveats, this outlier was crucial in deterring the observed patterns.
What is a single extreme year (in weather)?