The first year of data collection has come to an end, with the PhD students César Arvelos, Andrea Errante, Lalaina Ramiliarisona and Tsito Randriatsitohaina having spent six months in the rainforests to study Melastomataceae reproductive biology. They were joined by highly movtivated field assistants and together were able to ammass an incredible dataset, covering 100 species of Melastomataceae across more than 20 genera and 12 distinct tribes. Some tribes, like Melastomateae, Miconieae and Sonerileae are represented by many species across different elevation zones in the elevational gradients! The fieldwork teams could document several novel instances of pollinator shifts in Melastomataceae, encompassing different diurnal bird and nocturnal rodent and bat pollinators! They could also document different cases of generalist insect pollination and record bee vibrations for a large diversity of different bee species visiting the whole breadth of flower morphological diversity of Melastomataceae. Currently, we are working our way through more than 10TB of pollinator video recording data, extracting sound files to characterize bee vibrational properties, identifying bee and plant taxa, counting pollen grains (from many thousands of flowers collected in Eppendorf tubes) and preparing for DNA extractions of bees and plants. Several of the plant species we found during fieldwork are new to science, and the same likely holds true for some of the bee species! Detailed species descriptions will thus also form part of our work in the next years.

While this first field season has come to an end and much of the collected samples still await processing, new field teams are forming to start data collection for the second field season. The second field season is inteded to fill small gaps in the year 1 dataset, allow digging deeper in some unresolved cases (specifically regarding the mating systems of some Melastomataceae) and implement more risky (but very fun!) pollination experiments! Updates on the next fieldtrips will follow! (photo credit: César Arvelos)

On October 1st 2024, MountBuzz has officially started. At the moment, we are preparing our first field trips to Brazil (January-April 2025) and Borneo (March-June 2025). Team Brazil consists of César Arvelos as PhD student, João Pedro Santos Pereira, Carlos Andres Matallana Puerto and Marcela Camila Oliveira Arata as field assistants. Team Borneo consists of Imran Sadovic as PhD student, Isadora Skudeny, Andrea Errante and Christabelle as field assistants.

So far, we are busy preparing data sheets for the field and for data entry, and ordering equipment. We will bring camcorders to the field to be able to monitor pollinators throughout the day, coupled with empirical pollinator observations. We are also preparing equipment for monitoring flower longevity and testing the breeding system of the different plant species, which means we need to bring a large array of mesh bags to bag flowers to prevent visitation from insects. Project collaborators Vinicius Brito (Brazil) and Florina Anthony (Borneo) are meanwhile busy helping with the planning of the logistics of these two first fieldtrips. In our first meeting about the fieldwork protocol, we have already noticed different coping strategies with stressful situations: our Brazilian team members seek company, play with their dogs and have a beer to calm down, our European team members isolate and retreat to alone time 😉