Insect pollinator nutritional & behavioral ecology
Last week, I was lucky enough participate in the first ever Plant and Pollen Metabarcoding Workshop at the University of Würzburg in Würzburg, Germany. The workshop was organized and led by Dr. Alexander Keller. In addition to Alex, we had two amazing teachers: Wiebke Sickel (PhD student, teacher for the lab portion), and Markus Ankenbrand […]
Last weekend, I was a part of the Tufts University Biology Union of Graduate Students (BUGS) booth at the USA Science and Engineering Festival. The theme of our booth was “Life is Communication.” To prepare for the festival (we started preparing about a year ago), we formed committees to create various interactive activities to showcase. […]
Recently, Harmen P. Hendriksma and Sharoni Shafir of the Bee Research Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel published a paper entitled “Honey bee foragers balance colony nutritional deficiencies.” Anyone who knows me or my research might know that I have been waiting (slightly impatiently) for this full paper to become available. Finally, […]
Since I have a photo album dedicated to the neotropical pollinators that I was lucky enough to see, I figured I would write a post with some more detail about their diversity! First off, what does “neotropical” actually mean? Simply, it means Central and South America (shaded in the map below). More scientifically, “neotropical” is […]
After returning from Costa Rica, it’s hard to decide what to write about—there’s so much! I saw amazing plants and animals, released baby sea turtles, made great friends, conducted research, and ate a LOT of rice and beans. This first Costa Rica-themed post will focus on a particular pollinator I fell in love with: the […]
This past week I attended the First Annual Protecting Pollinators in Ornamental Landscapes Conference in Hendersonville, NC. When it comes to protecting pollinators, a lot of research focuses on honey bees, pathogens, pesticides, and the current state of agriculture however, most of us encounter pollinators in the ornamental landscape (i.e. urban environments, backyard gardens). At […]
Providence Pollinator Lab 