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It’s been some busy times as we’re trying to get some longterm projects published! Hopefully the first in a string of these is our new work in PNAS, led by Anthony Vaudo and with collaborator Lee Dyer, in which we asked how the protein and lipid content structured interactions between Eastern Sierra/Great Basin plants and native bees. More to come on this!
Like all of them apparently, it’s been a pretty busy year! We have some updates on projects long-term and new, exploring the (possible) function of neuroactive chemicals in floral nectar out.
First, our longstanding work on octopamine in nectar is out in two places:
Co-first-authors Felicity Muth and Casey Philbin, as well as collaborator Chris Jeffrey, in iScience. We surveyed floral nectars for biogenic amines, and found some neat ones! We then explored their effects, alone and in combination with caffeine on bee behavior.
From the bee POV, we realized while doing these experiments that we lacked much data on how consumption of octopamine affected bumble bee behavior, since so much has been done in honey bees. This elicited a second paper where, building off of former undergrad Emily Breslow’s Honors Thesis, we did a mini-review of the literature and report effects on Bombus.
In progress, PI Leonard attended the 2023 Gordon Research Conference on Plant-Herbivore Interactions and gave a talk sharing some new data on other NTs common in nectar. Lots of new ideas here, in work being helmed by PhD student Jess Buelow. Stay tuned for likely talks later this summer!
Sunrise, not sunset!
A busy year and I’ve gotten behind on updates— some notable cool things that happened amidst a global pandemic…
Proud of our new paper out in Functional Ecology, in which Sarah Richman and a great team explored how natural chemicals found in some plants’ nectars (caffeine, thymol, and digoxin, found in Citrus, thyme, and foxglove respectively…) interact with neonicotinoid pesticides to influence bee health and behavior. Read our blog post about it here!
Big congratulations to two PhD students, Jess and Anna who each received fellowships— Anna a 3-year NIFA Predoctoral Fellowship to study the effects of pesticides and fungicides on bees and plants, and Jess a 3- year NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to focus on pollen chemistry and bee behavior. Lots to celebrate!
Comings and goings
Seems like time for an update! Despite all the challenges thrown our way by the pandemic (lab shutdowns, conference cancellations, online teaching), some bright spots of the past year:
Jake Francis defended his dissertation, and left to begin a postdoctoral position at UC Davis with Dr. Rachel Vannette. We can’t wait to see what cool insights into plant-microbe-pollinator interactions he uncovers! Congrats!
We collectively decided that learning more about microbes would be a good pandemic project— so we (co first authors Jake Francis and Anna Tatarko produced a new paper in Current Opinion in Insect Science that explores how insights from the world of pollinator behavior might inform research into floral microbes, and vice versa.
Anthony Vaudo rounded up an impressive dataset on the macronutrient content of different plant species’ pollens (alongside data on bee corbicular loads), and in his 2020 paper, also provides a useful methodology.
PI Leonard “returned” from sabbatical and was, as they say on the Great British Bake Off show, chuffed to receive the 2020 NSHE Graduate Academic Advisor Award. Truly chuffed!
Isabelle, Sage, and Jake sampling flowers at our Norden CA field site
This summer’s research is in full swing, and new happenings include:
Two new papers! Muth et al. Biology Letters asks how neonic pesticides impact learning of floral scent vs. color…and Francis et al. Current Biology explores how nectar and pollen chemistry might work together to affect interactions between plants, their pollinators, and their co-flowering competitors.
Two new people! Isabelle Maalouf has joined us as a postgrad research assistant, and Anthony Vaudo has joined the lab as a postdoctoral researcher, joining the NSF-funded project “Nutritionally complex floral rewards in a community context”.
Campus workspace
As spring semester comes to an end, some lab highlights!
Felicity ended her postdoctoral era with a new publication on how neonicotinoid pesticides impact learning in free-flying bees, and now heads to UT-Austin to begin her faculty position.
Jake received 2nd place in the UNR Graduate Student Association’s Student Paper Competition! A version of this work will be out in press in a few weeks, so stay tuned…
Anna received a Hadley-Lynch Scholarship from the UNR Biology Department!
PI Leonard received the Hyung K. Shin Award for Excellence in Research from the College of Science. It was great to have all our hard work recognized in this way!
Now for a busy but hopefully productive summer! Many of us will be at conferences (e.g. International Pollinator Conference at UC Davis, Evolution). PI Leonard is starting a year of leave, so may be a bit slower to answer emails than normal.
Eventually…
As the latest snowstorm heads into town, we’re starting to make plans for Spring/Summer 2019, which include:
Saying farewell :( to Dr. Felicity Muth, who is heading to start her own lab at UT Austin :)
Attending the 2019 International Pollinator Conference (UC Davis) and giving talks at Evolution
Beginning sabbatical leave!
It’s been a busy and productive year so far, with USDA-funded new postdoctoral researcher Sarah Richman joining the lab, and new PhD student Anna Tatarko starting up electrophysiological experiments with Dennis Mathew. The past few months have also seen a new paper out on how pollen fatty acids influence bee learning, and (very shortly) we think our first in a series of neonicotinoid papers written by Felicity Muth will be out. Stay tuned!
Now that grades are submitted and the summer is stretching before us, what happened this Spring? A lot!
The summer should be jam packed with mentoring workshops (AL), Floral volatile workshops (JF and DP), presentations at Animal Behavior (AL) and the Canadian Society for Ecology and Evolution (FM). On top of all that, new PhD student Anna is joining the lab soon!
Cheers!
2018 is shaping up to be an exciting year for the lab: not only did PI Leonard receive tenure, but we've also received three years of funding from USDA-NIFA to study how neonicotinoid pesticides interact with nutrition to influence bee behavior and performance. The project involves collaborations with Dennis Mathew (UNR Neuroscience) and members of the growing UNR Neonicotinoid Working Group.
We're hoping to recruit grad students and a postdoc!
Exciting news in the lab! Felicity has been awarded a highly prestigious L'Oreal USA Postdoctoral Fellowship for Women in Science!
This fellowship will allow her to take her research on bees, pesticides, and cognition in some new and exciting directions! For a full breakdown, check out the official Press Release!
Measuring nectar
We're wrapping up a great summer by attending the BOMBUSS conference in Logan, Utah. This first-of-its kind meeting was an intensive immersion in methods for bumblebee researchers.
Felicity gave a lightning talk and poster about the new FMPER technique, which we are using to measure learning in wild bees. Excitingly, the paper describing the method is now out (Methods in Ecology and Evolution). The FMPER technique is not only awesome for our research, but also makes a great undergraduate lab activity (contact us for details).
After co-leading a session on "Foraging and Nutrition" with Hollis Woodard (UC Riverside), and spending 3 days talking Bombus non-stop, very excited to get back to lab and try out some of what we've learned!
We're going to keep BOMBUSS spirit alive at UNR this semester, with EECB Colloquia by Hollis Woodard, Maj Rundlöf (Lund University./UC Davis) aaaaand Felicity Muth herself this semester!
Celebrating at Midtown Eats with a "Bee's Knees" cocktail
I was honored to receive the 2017 "Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor" award, from UNR! We try hard to create a research environment in which undergraduates have a chance to get a taste of science. Thanks everyone!!!!
Felicity's edible bumblebee colony, complete with honeypots
Springtime, and lots to celebrate!
Most flowers offer visitors some combination of nectar AND pollen, but nearly all research on bee cognition involves nectar alone (or, increasingly, pollen alone). We wondered how well bees learned an association between color and a given resource (pollen) when they were also collecting the alternative resource (nectar).
The paper tells a complex story that can be easily summarized: while collecting pollen had no effect on bees' ability to learn a nectar-color association, collecting nectar impaired their ability to learn a pollen-color association.
Read the whole story for our thoughts on why this might be happening, and what it might mean for plant fitness. This paper was a long time in coming, so it's nice to see out!
Felicity demonstrates a new system for marking bees with magnetic thorax tags.
Dr. Felicity Muth, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab, is due to be on Science Friday today! (March 3, 11-1 PST). Felicity will be discussing new research on bee intelligence, alongside host Ira Flatow and UK researcher Dr. Lars Chittka.
Listen to the 17 minute segment, and read a few more details available at: http://sciencefriday.com/segments/the-secret-smart-life-of-bees/
If you found your way here after listening to the show, here are links to Felicity's:
Our new paper in Evolutionary Ecology reviews new findings and questions springing from the Special Issue I guest-edited. It was a great experience putting together this project, and fun to do some brainstorming about the future of the field.
Choose your own bee-venture!
Felicity and I were excited to be interviewed for this piece, which reports on a few recent findings that have expanded our understanding of the bee's sensory world. Among all the other great aspects of this article, nice to get links to the Muth et. al. and Russell et al. papers in Animal Behaviour!
It's been a busy fall (and it's not over yet!). Two recent developments of note:
1) The arrival of the new RFID system! It got stuck for 6 weeks in US Customs while they tried to classify it and sort out the paperwork from our German supplier/shipper. We all wish we had taken German in high school.
2) Our pollen taste paper got a nice write-up in the "Outside JEB" section of the Journal of Experimental Biology.
Felicity in the field
Congrats to Dr. Felicity Muth, who received a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Association of University Women! You can read about Felicity's award in Nevada Today!
