Jenna Melanson

Looking for a PhD student for a biodiversity and insect health on restored mining sites project. Some really neat questions to answer.

À la recherche d'un.e étudiant.e au doctorat pour étudier la biodiversité et santé des insectes sur des sites miniers restaurés.

Exciting new paper by Jens Ulrich & Risa Sargent: "Urban landscapes with more natural greenspace support higher pollinator diversity." esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

USGS Bee Lab at the Eastern Ecological Science Center The USGS Bee Lab supports research on native bees. As part of that program we and our co-located USFWS partners develop identification tools and keys for native bee species, take public access hi reso...

The legendary USGS Bee Lab is being shut down. The 2026 budget proposal defunds the Ecosystem Mission Area, which supported the lab. If their science helped your work, there’s still time to make your voice heard. Read below. (1/4)
🧪 #pollinators #Pollinators #USGS #Entomology #Hymenoptera 🪲🪳

Paranthrene simulans, (Grote, 1881), a Batesian mimicry MASTER!

#educational #science #entomology #bugs #moth #wasp #insects #lepidoptera #batesianmimicry #nature

We published guidance on what to do if you find a bumble bee nest. These incidental discoveries could add up to be important datasets if data is (somewhat) standardized.

We provide case studies with two endangered rusty patched bumble bee nests

resjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

Happy #WorldWildlifeDay. A friendly reminder that livestock cannot replace native biodiversity, despite what you may have heard.

Join us! Science Homecoming helps scientists reconnect with communities by writing about the importance of science funding in their hometown newspapers. We’ve mapped every small newspaper in the U.S. and provide resources to get you started. Help science get back home 🧪🔬🧬 🏠

sciencehomecoming.com

Digging below the surface: Hidden risks for ground-nesting bees Hidden risks for ground-nesting bees

About 70% of native bees in the US nest in the ground and are the most vulnerable bees to our high-pesticide agriculture. Native bees are the backbone of pollination services yet are in steep decline. If we value our abundant food supply, we need to protect our native bees. 🧪 🌍
tinyurl.com/54xjat4j

I don’t mean to overly romanticize bees, but I don’t think it is possible to overly romanticize bees. 🐝

Funded PhD opportunity in the Graystock lab! If you are interested in pollinators, microbes, parasites and machine learning, please get in touch! - only a few days left to let me know! Whilst a project using the above is planned, im happy to adapt to the strengths of a candidate

If you post some photos on iNat, you can probably get some help with ID! I’m not a taxonomist (mostly work with bumble bees) but there are lots of great folks on there who know their stuff!! Make sure to get lots of photos from different angles!

Wild Bee Conservation Bees are the most important group of pollinators. With the exception of a few species of wasps, only bees deliberately gather pollen to bring back to their nests for their offspring. Bees also exhibit...

To the second question (solitary vs social), more than 90% of bee species are solitary!! (They can also nest above OR below ground) but have different life cycles than hive building social bees. Here’s another resource from Xerces w info on the solitary bee life cycle: www.xerces.org/endangered-s...

Hey thanks for asking!! This is sort of two questions in one—ground vs cavity nesting, and solitary vs social. Here’s a great resource from Xerces RE the first question: in North America, ~70% of bees are ground nesting (these can be social or solitary): xerces.org/pollinator-c....

CUTE 🥹

"Ants solving a geometric problem and it's amazing."

This is a great example of 'emergent phenomenon':
- None of the ants understand the problem they're solving.
- None of them can see the whole shape.
- A series of small decisions or rules add up to something with a new layer of complexity.

Pollinator-Friendly Native Plant Lists We've prepared the following lists of recommended native plants that are highly attractive to pollinators such as native bees, honey bees, butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds, and are well-suited for...

Great post!
Check out this amazing link from the Xerces Society @xercessociety.bsky.social if you're looking for which #nativeplants are great for your region AND want to attract our pollinator friends!
xerces.org/pollinator-c...

Photo of Dr. Michelle Tseng and text of tweet from UBC Science congratulating her on receiving Peter Wall Legacy Fellowship

Way to go, Michelle... I'm sure you'll do great things over the next few years! #UBCZoology #UBC

Today is International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Just a reminder that ~25% of adults are disabled, ~19% of undergrads, yet less than 10% of graduate degree recipients identify as such.

#DisabledInSTEM
#DisableAcademia
#Disability

Gustatory sensitivity to amino acids in bumblebees Bees rely on amino acids obtained from nectar and pollen for essential physiological functions, including maintenance, sexual maturation, and larval development. While amino acid concentrations in nec...

First post and it's a biggie! The first preprint from our lab is out now 🥳 Something I have wanted to know for a long time- can bumblebees taste amino acids? The answer is yes...but not all of them! 1/2 @sussexneuro.bsky.social
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Bumblebee numbers soar as barley gives way to nature in Perthshire Within two years the bare soil and stubble on 90 acres in Denmarkfield has been naturally colonised by 84 plant species

Nice positive story about bumblebee numbers responding to rewilding, sadly illustrated with a picture of a honeybee ;)
www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/...

A close up image of a yellow flower with a bee foraging in the centre of the flower. A human hand is partially visible, keeping the flower as still as possible.

Photo of PhD position advertisement on pollinator adaptive capacity to climate change

PhD opportunity! Dr. Michelle Dileo and myself are recruiting a PhD student to study #pollinator adaptive capacity to #climatechange. Interested in #bees or #butterflies, #genomics, landscape #ecology? Based in 🇨🇦. michelledileo.wordpress.com
See advert for details. Please share! 🧪🐝🦋

Black Women in Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Science BWEEMS is a global network of Black Women driving innovation in ecology, evolution, and marine science despite being historically overlooked and isolated in the field.

Hi Bluesky! We are BWEEMS, Black Women in Ecology, Evolution and Marine Science. A non-profit dedicated to amplifying and supporting Black women in EEMS spaces! It's nice to be here! 🐟 🪴 🐊

www.bweems.org

Writing a letter of reference for someone? Or (gasp) drafting for someone who’s writing for you?

If you haven’t seen this graphic on avoiding gender bias, read it. Ref letters are broadly biased in both major and seemingly tiny ways. The bias is avoidable once you’re aware.

Beenome100

Spent some time the other day updating the #beenome100 website! If you’re interested in #beegenomes or #insectgenomes in general, check it out 🐝

beenome100.org

Imperiled Bombus Conservation Task Force | Pollinator.org Pollinator Partnership is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization and the largest in the world dedicated exclusively to the protection and promotion of ...

Grants available to grad students/postdocs working on Bombus conservation; 10K for one year. www.pollinator.org/nappc/imperi...

A large female Nevada bumble bee queen rests on a rose blossom.

One of my favourite bee encounters this year was this bodacious Bombus nevadensis queen waking up on a Nootka rose blossom in a ditch somewhere in the Kootenays in British Columbia. June, 2024. She performed her morning ablutions and then went back to work.

The video provided in Supplementary Information from the very interesting paper by Lai and co-authors in Ecology, showing potential pollination by Ethiopian wolves of Kniphofia foliosa! 🐺

Read it here: esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

@pollinet.bsky.social

I would love to be added if there’s space!

I think we share a brain cell