Sarah A. Johnson

• Master of Science
• PhD Student at Simon Fraser University

One of the largest drivers of global biodiversity trends is land use change and habitat loss. Through several studies of beneficial arthropods, we have compiled a spatially extensive passive-sampling arthropod dataset for Western Canada focused on landscape diversity. This dataset, collected from 2015–2019, consists of more than 200,000 specimens,...

Bumble bee conservation focuses on supplementing floral resources. Yet, nesting site availability is linked to bumble bee abundance. As a supplement to natural nest sites, nest boxes could be deployed and baited with synthetic lures. As queen bumble bees reportedly establish colonies in abandoned rodent burrows, we hypothesized (1) that queen bumbl...

Bumble bees are important pollinators in temperate forested regions where fire is a driving force for habitat change, and thus understanding how these insects respond to fire is critical. Previous work has shown bees are often positively affected by the postfire environment, with burned sites supporting greater bee abundance and diversity, and incr...

Mounting evidence suggests that climate change, agricultural intensification and disease are impacting bumblebee health and contributing to species’ declines. Identifying how these factors impact insect communities at large spatial and temporal scales is difficult, partly because species may respond in different ways. Further, the necessary data mu...

Wild bees may benefit from the restoration of natural areas in agricultural regions. The abundance and diversity of wild bee species responds to the amount of nesting and foraging habitat, but it is less clear how the distribution of these resources (e.g., the landscape complexity) may affect bees. We implemented a pseudo-experiment to disentangle...

Bumble bees are globally important pollinators, especially in temperate regions, and evidence suggests that many species are declining. One recent high profile study by Soroye et al. (2020) applied occupancy models to dated historical collection data to quantify declines across North America and Europe. The authors modelled 66 species across a set...

Bumble bees are an important group of pollinating insects that are of increasing conservation concern due to relatively recent and dramatic species-specific declines. Nesting ecology can vary significantly between species, and nest site selection may be affected by many factors, including heredity, individual experience, and habitat availability. D...

One of the most commonly seeded crops in Canada is canola, a cultivar of oilseed rape (Brassica napus). As a mass-flowering crop grown intensively throughout the Canadian Prairies, canola has the potential to influence pollinator success across tens of thousands of square kilometers of cropland. Bumble bees (Bombus sp.) are efficient pollinators of...

Wing wear is widespread in flying insects, but its effects on flight are controversial. In this research, we examine the separate and combined effects of wing area and wing area asymmetry on maximum load-lifting capability in bumble bees Bombus impatiens Cresson, 1863. Individual bees with experimentally induced forewing wear (0%–24% forewing area...