Tag Archives: taxonomy

90 Dr. Casey Delphia – The Bees of Montana

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Dr. Casey Delphia on PolliNation with Andony Melathopoulos

Dr. Casey Delphia is a Research Scientist at Montana State University and Associate Curator of Apoidea in the Montana Entomology Collection (MTEC) where she conducts research on managed solitary bees and wild native bees in agricultural and wildland ecosystems. Projects include evaluating the use of wildflower strips for supporting bees and pollination services on farmlands and, most recently, documenting the wild bees of Montana. Towards building a comprehensive bee species list for the state, Casey co-authored the Bumble Bees of Montana as well as two recent checklists. In her spare time, Casey enjoys collecting bees in the desert southwest, the tropics of Belize, and the many interesting habitats found throughout Montana.

Listen in to learn about Dr. Delphia’s bee atlas projects, why Montana is a “black hole” of bee data, and where to find the coolest native bees of Montana.

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“It’s really great to be working on bees in Montana and it’s also not so great. It’s great because there are so many things to discover and it’s also not so great because there are so many things to discover.” – Dr. Casey Delphia

Show Notes:

  • Where to find the coolest native bees of Montana
  • What Dr. Delphia is hoping to accomplish in her recent bumblebee atlas project
  • Why Montana is a “black hole” of bee data
  • The challenges of bumblebee identification
  • Dr. Delphia’s upcoming project documenting the native bees of Montana
  • How Dr. Delphia collects specimens for her research
  • Dr. Delphia’s go-to tools for the field and the lab

“When somebody starts working with bumblebees and then they tell me it’s easy, then I realize they’re really not paying attention and they don’t know what they’re doing. The more you learn, the more you question what you know.” – Dr. Casey Delphia

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59 Dr. Hollis Woodard – Bees in dynamic and extreme environments

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Dr. Hollis Woodard on PolliNation with Andony Melathopoulos

Bees can live in some extreme environments; from the hot deserts of the US southwest, to the tundra in Alaska and northern Canada. Dr. Hollis Woodard’s research focuses on the underlying mechanisms that allow these bees to adapt to these extremes, providing insights into basic bee biology that can help us understand how bees might respond to our rapidly-changing planet. Dr. Woodard is an Assistant Professor of Entomology at the University of California, Riverside. From 2013-2015, she was a USDA-NIFA Postdoctoral Fellow working on the nutritional ecology of bumble bees with Dr. Shalene Jha at the University of Texas at Austin. She received a PhD in Biology in 2012 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she worked with Dr. Gene Robinson on the molecular basis of social evolution in bees.

Listen in to today’s episode to learn about the bees that evolved in vastly different climates, and why Dr. Woodard’s lab studies the way they have adapted.

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“I started thinking, I have learned a lot about bee nutrition and behavior to answer fundamental biological questions about bumble bees, but if this group is in trouble maybe I can take what I learned to apply to questions of how to conserve them.” – Dr. Hollis Woodard

Show Notes:

  • Bumble bee diversity and the wide range of habitats they have adapted to living in.
  • How bees in the arctic have changed to fit within their environment.
  • How bees have evolved sociality multiple independent times, but how all share common sugar metabolic pathways.
  • Why some bumblebee populations are doing okay while others are in steep decline.
  • The challenges that are facing native bees today.
  • The key challenges to a national native bee monitoring system and some of the ideas for tackling these problems.
  • Why E.O. Wilson has been such a big inspiration for Dr. Woodard.

“There are some groups across the US who are monitoring for native bees and one the things we can do [to monitor bees as a country] is start to unite some of these efforts and link up and standardize approaches. We need to move beyond the borders of a state, because many bees don’t exist within the boundaries of one state.” – Dr. Hollis Woodard

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50 Lincoln Best – Taxonomy with The Oregon Bee Atlas

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Lincoln Best on PolliNation with Andony Melathopoulos

Lincoln Best is the Lead Taxonomist for the Oregon Bee Project/Atlas. He is obsessed with natural history, the little things, and designing plant communities to support biodiversity. He has studied the biodiversity of native bees from Haida Gwaii to Tasmania, and from Baja California to Taiwan. Few things excite him more than observing 4mm native bees on their floral hosts in arid habitats.

Listen in to learn about Lincoln Best’s manifesto for native bees and plant communities, and his best practices for volunteers in the Oregon Bee Atlas.

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“A lot of our environmental issues are landscape issues. So in order to have a healthy landscape, we need to know how to manage places and also restore them.” – Lincoln Best

Show Notes:

  • What Lincoln believes to be the key to solving our environmental issues
  • How to maximize environmental benefit from the biodiversity of plants
  • What Lincoln has been doing with the Oregon Bee Atlas
  • The process of organizing and cataloguing thousands of bee specimens
  • What makes Southern Calgary ideal for studying the effects of biodiversity on pollinator habitats
  • The importance of proper labeling
  • Lincoln’s best practices for data and specimen collection
  • How species abundance plays into specimen collection

“It’s really interesting for someone like me that loves to hunt for flower populations and look for these strange bees to be able to get that data right out of the collection.” – Lincoln Best

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26 Skyler Burrows – Bringing Taxonomy to Citizen Scientists

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Skyler Burrows on PolliNation with Andony Melathopoulos

Our guest today on PolliNation is Skyler Burrows, a taxonomist working with Utah State University, the USDA Bee Lab, and formerly with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s Virginia Working Landscape program. Much of Skyler’s work has been based in the trapping and identification of pollinators with the help of citizen scientists, and monitoring their diversity in a given area. His most recent project has been to create an online guide to aid in the identification of bees that may be invasive to the US, that will include a non-dichotomous key to the Megachilidae genera of the world with high quality images to target an audience without background in taxonomy.

In today’s episode, we will learn about Skyler’s work with pollinators, his projects with citizen scientists, and how you can get started in taxonomy.

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“Things like ‘Bees In Your Backyard’ are really helpful, but until you have the bee in your hand, it’s really difficult to know what you’ve got.“ – Skyler Burrows

Show Notes:

  • What is the Virginia Working Landscape program and how they are contributing to pollinator research
  • How Skyler and his team trap bees
  • Why the team uses a type of antifreeze in their traps, and it’s advantages
  • How the citizen scientists stay involved after their collection
  • The various challenges Skyler has faced in his project
  • How the great diversity of bees in the West can create difficulties for citizen scientists
  • What new citizen scientists should do to get started in taxonomy
  • Why the microscope is Skyler’s favorite tool
  • Why there is still a lot of room for discovery in researching bees and pollinator habitats

“There’s a lot of washing involved, blow drying to fluff up their hairs; there’s a lot of interesting methods [to help in identification], but we’re all just trying to make the bees look nice and pretty.“ – Skyler Burrows

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