Invasive plants may threaten Alaska's native berries

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
23 April 2012

FAIRBANKS, Alaska — 

Climate warming is allowing invasive plants to take hold in Alaska and possibly luring pollinators away from native berries, says University of Alaska Fairbanks ecologist Christa Mulder.

Blueberries and cranberries are a major part of Alaskan’s subsistence lifestyle, both directly by providing berries for eating and indirectly by providing forage for animals people eat.

Alaska’s native berries and invasive plants such as sweet clover share similar habitats and pollinators.

“If bees and other pollinators abandon native berries for invasive plants like sweet clover, we could see a lot fewer fruits on these plants,” said Mulder, a scientist at the UAF Institute of Arctic Biology who leads a project studying whether the presence of sweet clover can alter the production of bog blueberries and mountain cranberries.

Mulder hopes the public’s taste for berries will entice them into becoming volunteer citizen scientists and help her research team gather data on invasive sweet clover in Alaska and northern North America. She will be recruiting scientific helpers at the 2012 USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C. April 27-28, 2012, as part of an “All Things Bugs” booth.

“You don’t need to be a professional scientist to do research,” said Mulder. “Whether you live in Alaska or the Lower 48, you can make and record observations and be a part of our research team.”

Mulder’s booth will include a pollinator detective activity where people can look at slides of squashed stigmas – the sticky part of flowers that pollen adheres to - under a microscope and see if they can figure out whether the plant was near an invasive plant or not.

To lure prospective citizen scientists to her project, Mulder plans to have a “Taste of Alaska” activity at the booth where people can compare Alaska and commercial blueberries and report which tastes sweeter, which more intense, and which they like better.

For details on becoming a citizen scientist visit Mulder’s project website at: https://sites.google.com/a/alaska.edu/melibee-project/ or contact Katie Spellman at kvillano@alaska.edu or Christa Mulder at cpmulder@alaska.edu.

ADDITIONAL CONTACTS: Christa Mulder, Institute of Arctic Biology, associate professor of ecology and chair of the Department of Biology and Wildlife, University of Alaska Fairbanks. cpmulder@alaska.edu, 907-474-5493.

ON THE WEB: Christa Mulder’s project: Are Alaskan Pollinators Abandoning Native Berries for Exotic Clover? http://www.iab.uaf.edu/research/research_project_by_id.php?project_id=198

USA Science and Engineering Festival http://www.usasciencefestival.org/#

NOTE TO EDITORS: Mulder will be in Washington, D.C. April 27-28. Email contact is best: cpmulder@alaska.edu

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