Evaluating the impact of protected culture and plant diversity on pollinator communities

High tunnels are a form of protected culture that allow producers to extend the growing season and provide local food throughout the year. The use of high tunnels in specialty crop production has become increasingly popular in the US. Despite this, relatively little is understood about the dynamics of insects that visit plants in high tunnels, especially beneficial insects. This knowledge gap is further complicated by the fact that crop diversity varies drastically between growers. The goal of this study was to evaluate how the community composition of pollinating insects differs between high tunnel and open-field production systems, and how plant community composition influences the corresponding pollinator community. To do this, we implemented a 2x2 factorial observational study where we sampled pollinating insects in high tunnels vs open-field plots, and in tomato monocultures vs polycultures of tomatoes, squash, beans, and strawberry. We utilized passive sampling with ‘bee bowl’ traps and active sampling using insect vacuums to identify the pollinator communities present in our treatments. Between high tunnels and open-field plots, we expect to find that Hymenopteran pollinators are more common in open-fields while Dipteran pollinators are more common in high tunnels. Further, we expect tomato monocultures to support only a subset of the pollinator community present in polycultures, due to a lack of diverse floral resources in the monoculture plots. Information from this study will be used to develop insect management practices for high tunnel growers and inform future research focused on optimizing pollination services in high tunnel crop production.