My Current Research:
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Butterfly-Pollen Interaction Networks
Interactions between plants and insects dominate terrestrial biomes and are altered in response to global human-environmental change. Documenting such changes in complex interactions is challenging, however, because traditional methods for describing plant-insect interactions at community scales are often based on relatively short sampling periods.
We investigate quantitative networks of pollen-insect interactions gleaned from adult Lepidoptera from long-term museum collections that helped to overcome the challenge of limited temporal resolution. We report how richness and frequency of butterfly-pollen associations have changed over a 100-year time series in the Great Basin of Nevada and California, USA.
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Reference:
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Balmaki, B., Christensen, T., Dyer, L.A., 2022. Reconstructing butterfly-pollen interaction networks through periods of anthropogenic drought in the Great Basin (USA) over the past century. Anthropocene. 37:100325.
Previous Research
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Late Holocene paleoenvironmental changes:
Pollen, benthic foraminifera, diatoms, sediment grain size, and organic matter content from a 230-cm long-AMS dated sediment core (Core SB-51B) were used to reconstruct paleoenvironmental changes and paleoclimatic evolution within the Seal Beach wetland (southern California, USA), during the last ~ 2000 years. The analyzed sedimentary sequence indicated the possible occurrence of three seismic events during the Late Holocene: E3 and E2 before 1760  cal  years BP and E1, which took place just prior to 390  cal  years BP.
Reference:
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Balmaki, B et al., 2019. Late Holocene Paleoenvironmental Changes in the Seal Beach Wetland (California, USA): A Micropaleontological Perspective. Quaternary International. 530-531: 14-24.
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Late Pleistocene to Late Holocene vegetation transition using packrat midden and pollen evidence
The Mojave Desert of the American West is characterized by plant species that reflect a unique mixture of winter precipitation and summer monsoon climate. Currently, the Mojave Desert experiences a strong summer monsoonal pattern with weak winter precipitation.
Data from pollen and packrat midden analyses have revealed a history of Mojave Desert vegetation during the transition from the late Pleistocene to late Holocene (~17500 Cal. years B.P. to ~ 1200 Cal. years B.P.) that highlight a summer dominated monsoonal pattern, similar to those in the greater American Southwest.
We compare pollen data from a lava tube in the Cima volcanic field, located in south-central region of the Mojave Desert, with plant macrofossil data from several woodrat midden localities in the region. The record for the Cima volcanic field reveals a vegetation history spanning the last ~ 8300 Cal. years B.P., with data from ancient woodrat middens detailing the record from ~17500 Cal. years B.P. to 7,800 Cal. years B.P. A Bryson macro-physical climate model for the transition from the late Pleistocene to the Late Holocene was created and compared to our findings to assess possible relationships between climatic variations and the arrival of diagnostic plant species within the Mojave Desert.
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Spiny fruits revealed by nano-CT scanning, from the early Oligocene Belén flora of Peru
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