From Blight to Bright: Reimagining vacant land to support people and biodiversity in cities

Are you interested in urban conservation? A field tour and workshop on August 19 hosted by Dr. Mary Gardiner and her Laboratory will highlight the importance of vacant land as a habitat for insects and source of many important ecosystem services we derive from our landscape. Speakers will  address the community of insects found in vacant lots, balancing the needs of people and insects in vacant lot design, how to establish native plants in degraded habitats, community gardening, and the importance of the urban forest. The city of Cleveland, OH manages over 30,000 vacant lots. Although these properties can be seen as blight, there are also many exciting ways to reimagine these greenspaces to promote conservation and community goals.

See the workshop schedule here: Blight to Bright – A Workshop on August 19 in Cleveland

Register here

Gardiner Lab alum MaLisa Spring has produced a new OSU Extension Factsheet titled: How to Identify and Enhance Wild Bees in Your Landscape (see link below to download). MaLisa’s MS thesis focused on the wild bees that forage in Cleveland vacant lot habitats. She is also an avid nature photographer, and some of her great bee shots are featured!

Entomology 85 2019-0524

Congratulations to Sarah Scott who was awarded a fellowship from the prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program!

Sarah’s application is titled: Bees in the city: The impacts of fragmentation and contamination on bumblebee fitness.

Over 12,000 graduate students applied for this award in 2018 and Sarah was one of 2,000 awardees. She joins 40 other students at Ohio State who are currently NSF GRFPs– bringing the Gardiner lab GRFP total to 4 students!

Congrats to Sarah on this well-deserved and exciting recognition!

Congratulations to Gardiner lab members who won awards at the North Central Branch meeting of the Entomological Society of America. We are very proud of all of our student talks– everyone who presented won an award!

 

Join the Gardiner Lab this summer! We are a landscape ecology lab based in Columbus, OH but we primarily conduct our research in the urban ecosystem of Cleveland, OH. Our NSF-funded research focuses on designing sustainable urban green spaces that are both cost-effective and better for the environment. As one of our field technicians, you will gain both field and lab experience. Download the application to learn more.

APPLICATIONS DUE MARCH 22nd!

(but accepted on a rolling basis afterwards)

At the end of your summer at the Gardiner Lab you can expect to gain:

• An increased knowledge of Ohio’s diverse insect and plant communities
• Skills in collecting unique arthropods including spiders, long legged flies, and bees
• A resume-building research experience and potential letters of recommendation for future jobs

Pay: $9.50/Hour (up to 38 hours/week)
Location: Columbus, OH @ The Ohio State University
Duration: May to mid-August, 2019

The Gardiner Lab will host an outreach workshop on the OSU Campus (Kottman Hall Atrium) on April 28 focused on our research documenting the conservation value of vacant land. If you are in the Columbus area see this link for details: Bugs in the City Program April 28-qnxw3w

The Gardiner Lab in the Department of Entomology at The Ohio State University seeks a Summer Urban Greenspace Manager. This individual will be responsible for maintaining (including mowing, trimming, mulching, weeding, and trash removal) a network of urban vacant lot greenspaces. The selected candidate will also assist Mary Gardiner with establishing experiments and collecting data from the vacant lot sites.  These habitats were established in 2014 and the Gardiner Lab is examining their value for arthropod conservation. The individual selected for this position must be able to drive, operate equipment such as lawn mowers and weed whips, and enjoy working independently and be comfortable interacting with the public.

This job is titled Research Assistant 1 in the OSU system will be posted for 2 weeks (March 19-31) and can be found here: https://www.jobsatosu.com/postings/85388

The position runs from May 1 to October 15, with an earlier start date possible.

Site photos and details here: https://u.osu.edu/gardinerlab/research/

Contact Mary Gardiner (gardiner.29@osu.edu) with questions related to the position after reviewing the full announcement.

Join the Gardiner Lab this summer! We are a landscape ecology lab based in Columbus, OH but we primarily conduct our research in the urban ecosystem of Cleveland, OH. Our NSF-funded research focuses on designing sustainable urban green spaces that are both cost-effective and better for the environment. As one of our field technicians, you will gain both field and lab experience. Download the application to learn more.

APPLICATIONS DUE MARCH 10th!

(but accepted on a rolling basis afterwards)

At the end of your summer at the Gardiner Lab you can expect to gain:

• An increased knowledge of Ohio’s diverse insect and plant communities
• Skills in collecting unique arthropods including spiders, long legged flies, and bees
• A resume-building research experience and potential letters of recommendation for future jobs

Pay: $9.50/Hour (up to 38 hours/week)
Location: Columbus, OH @ The Ohio State University
Duration: May to mid-August, 2018

Graduate student Katie Todd and undergraduate Mike Friedman recently presented their research as part of an Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association Field tour. The field day was held at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens Midtown Learning Farm. Midtown is one of first of now several CBG urban farms that employs Cleveland youth in a summer work-study program. Katie and Mike put together an educational display including bee nests, pinned specimens, and a handout explaining their research, which focuses on the value of urban greenspaces as a nesting habitat.

Graduate student Denisha Parker is going to determine if native lady beetles that have remained common following the introduction of exotic species have a low degree of dietary niche overlap with their competitors. If this is true, it would aid in our understanding of why some species have declined dramatically following exotic introductions while others have remained. Denisha was recently awarded a highly competitive North Central Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Graduate Student Grant ($11,924) to support her work. She will be collecting two species of lady beetles (checker-spot lady beetle (exotic) and orange spotted lady beetle (native)) from our control and high-diversity wildflower vacant lot plots as well as urban farms using sweep nets and sticky traps. Using molecular gut content analysis she will determine the diet of these species and determine how much overlap exists and if it varies by foraging habitat.

Project Description: Native lady beetles are an important group of urban agricultural predators, but in recent decades many have declined dramatically coinciding with introductions of exotic lady beetle competitors. We will determine if the degree of overlap in predator diet, a form of exploitative competition, explains why some native species have declined while others have remained common following exotic establishment.  Using this information, we can manage greenspaces to both conserve native biodiversity and promote urban farm sustainability.