Pollination of wild and cultivated plants is increasingly threatened by climate change and other anthropogenic disturbances, but pollination is also highly dynamic, and understanding what drives this variability may help guide more effective interventions. Current research projects include collaborative meta-analyses quantifying pollinator contributions to global agriculture and exploring how plant-pollinator trait-matching affects pollination effectiveness, surveys of how pollinator community composition varies across European crops, and greenhouse experiments testing how floral damage, nectar removal, and different pollination treatments interact to affect Vicia faba reproduction.
Plants are essential sources of pollinator nutrition, but petals, nectar, leaves, and other plant tissues can also be sites for the transmission of parasites, viruses, and other pathogens. Recent and ongoing research projects include assessing the temporal dynamics of Deformed Wing Virus transmission in plant-pollinator interaction networks and using inoculation assays and pathogen screens to understand which species can be infected by Crithidia bombi.
In our analysis of 168 pollination effectiveness studies, we found that honey bees were less effective than the average bee and rarely the most effective pollinator of plants they visit.