D3055: Refuge lawn: Promoting pollinators in urban greenspace

Refuge Lawn is a USDA NIFA AFRI funded project with collaborators at Mississippi State University, University of Georgia, and Auburn University. The project seeks to determine what low-growing flowering forbs can be incorporated into turfgrass lawns to promote pollinator diversity and resources, and what establishment and management practices best fit the diversified Refuge Lawn. The team at Auburn University seeks to create a pollinator network for the candidate forb species to identify which species provide the most benefit to pollinating insects. Candidate forb species were transplanted into established turfgrass plots at three locations throughout Auburn, AL in the Fall of 2021. Observation of flower visiting insects began in Spring of 2022 and will continue through the end of Fall 2024. During observations, flower visiting insects are collected and identified to the lowest possible taxonomic level. A pollinator network for the plots can be generated from this data using the bipartite package in R. Preliminary results from the 2022 and 2023 growing seasons suggest that across the three sites in Auburn, Alabama, white clover (Trifolium repens), yellow woodsorrel (Oxalis stricta), and spring beauty (Claytonia virginica), provide resources for greater than 90% of the observed pollinating insect diversity across the entire growing season.