Connor and Donna successfully defend their dissertations!!

Huge congrats to Dr. Connor Morozumi and Dr. Donna McDermott for defending their dissertations this week! The Brosi Lab reunited in Atlanta for their defenses (both on the same day, in a “defense double header”). Connor and Donna both had amazing presentations! Connor’s dissertation focused on how plant-pollinator networks respond to perturbation, and Donna’s focused on ecology teaching assessments and social cues in bee foraging. After completing their PhDs, Connor will start a postdoc at University of Louisville and Donna will start in a faculty position in the Emory Writing Center.

Incoming PhD student Annie Colgan visits UW

We’re happy to announce that we have a new PhD student starting this fall: Annie Colgan! Annie is currently a student contractor for the USGS Rocky Mountain Science Center and is interested in ecological communities and global change. She is visiting UW and our lab this weekend to meet everyone in person and check out the UW campus and Seattle neighborhoods. We can’t wait for her to join us in the fall!

Brosi Lab featured in UW and Emory news

Laura’s work on antibiotics in agriculture and bee foraging was highlighted in the UW News and Emory News last week! In the articles, Berry and Laura talked about their recent paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B which found that exposure to streptomycin reduces bumblebee learning and foraging. Laura conducted this study in the lab and will test it in the field this spring in eastern Washington. We are very excited about this work and that it was highlighted in the UW and Emory news.

Recent papers from the Brosi Lab

Several lab members have recently published papers or have papers coming out soon! Loy and Berry have a new review paper in press in Ecology: “The effects of pollinator diversity on pollination function”In their paper, they propose a new framework for diversity-function relationships, including two mechanisms in pollination systems. Loy and Berry also contributed to a recent paper in Conservation Biology, “Conserving alpha and beta diversity in wood-production landscapes” about changes in biological communities after different types of biomass harvest.

Laura receives USDA-NIFA grant!

Congratulations to Laura for receiving an Agricultural and Food Research Initiative New Investigator Seed Grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture! This year the program awarded 10 grants to support research to sustain healthy pollinator populations in agricultural settings and address the issue of pollinator declines. With this award, Laura will study the effects of broadcast-spray agricultural antibiotics on bee microbiome and foraging behavior. She will carry out lab experiments at Emory University and fieldwork at pear orchards in Washington State.