What a year...

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!

New paper: Special issue on Plant-Animal Communication!

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.

Be a Bee: NYT's interactive piece features lab research!

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!

PBS Video "Deep Look"

Josh Cassidy's awesome footage

We're super excited about this short video and article put out by Deep Look, a science series produced by childhood-dominating Bay Area PBS station KQED! Filmmaker Josh Cassidy visited our lab for 2 days in April, and got some great footage of our bees on persian violet (Exacum affine). Jake makes a cameo in the footage, and his research is featured in the article by Lisa Potter. It was a great experience start to finish!

Deep Look is a great series that combines beautiful footage with truly in-depth science, and I highly recommend subscribing on YouTube!

Bees have good taste: new Biology Letters paper out!

**Update: this got a lot of press! Science, Nature and Scientific American**

In our new Biology Letters paper, Felicity, Jake and I showed that bees responded differently to pollen blends adulterated with a sweet (sucrose) or bitter (quinine) substance. The taste of pollen affected how much of it bees collected from a flower, as well as their tendency to land subsequently on a visually-similar flower. We're excited about the implications of these findings for looking at pollen chemistry in a new light! This was also a fun chance to use our thermal camera :)

Request a copy on ResearchGate!

New paper: How do bees forage for 2 resources?

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In our new Behavioral Ecology paper, Jake looks at how bees order their collection of pollen (protein) and nectar (carbohydrates). Request a copy on ResearchGate!

National Pollinator Week in the Biggest Little Pollinator Garden

We had a soft open for the UNR Pollinator Garden this week, as part of our celebration of National Pollinator week (earlier, Jake Francis gave a public lecture at Urban Roots).

The effort was coordinated by US FWS rep. Sarah Kulpa, and went off without a hitch! We had honey tasting, face painting, bee costumes, lemonade, free plants and seeds from the US FWS office, the NV Native Plant Society, and live bugs from NV Bugs and Butterflies. Although it was pretty hot out, we stayed cool with a live bumblebee colony under a shade tree, and showed off some of the UNR Natural History Museum's bee and butterfly collections.

We counted about 185 visitors to the "live bees!" table. What a great day!!

Daugherty Bee Rodeo

This summer, our lab is hosting the inaugural Daugherty Fellows, a group of education students who will be spending time in the lab and shadowing Jake Francis  in the field. This program is intended to enhance the scientific exposure of future Biology teachers in N. Nevada, and is funded by the Daugherty Foundation. We had our first field foray a few weeks ago, and I think these pictures capture the fun we had.

This program is being run by Sierra Nevada Journeys-- read more about it through their blog entry.

College of Science Poster Session 2015

Simon, Phillip and Harvi gave excellent poster presentations...and congrats to Jake who won 3rd place!

National Pollinator Week at Discovery Museum

As part of our inaugural celebration of NPW in Nevada, We exhibited a live colony at the Terry Lee Wells Nevada Discovery Museum, with Nevada Bugs and Butterflies.

National Pollinator Week!

The lab has excitedly partnered with Nevada Bugs and Butterflies, the Nevada Museum of Natural History, and the Great Basin Community Food Co-op to host a series of events for National Pollinator Week. We believe these to be the first events held to celebrate NPW in Nevada! We plan to grow bigger and better each year, so stay tuned.

"An Evening to Celebrate Pollinators" at the Co-Op, June 20th 2014. Graduate student Jacob Francis presented a brief (18 min) overview of the challenges faced by native pollinators, followed by an in-depth Q&A with local beekeepers, Leonard lab members, and the general public.

End of $emester

Congrats to Jake Francis and Brandy Reynolds, who both received good news at the end of the semester-- EECB research funds (Jake) and Biology Dept. Scholarship! (Brandy).

View from UNR's Little Valley Research station

Summer awaits!!

Congrats to Jake Francis, NSF Graduate Research Fellowship recipient!!

Dean's Graduate Scholar Award

Congrats to UNR College of Science Dean's Graduate scholar recipient, Jake Francis!