Healthy food, land, and people depend on supported research
“The strength of science is how far its impact goes. What’s the point of learning something if it’s just going to sit on a bookshelf?”Sarah Scott
Doing good for bumble bees takes finding out what’s bad for them.
Sarah Scott, a doctoral student in the CFAES Department of Entomology, is studying how the fuzzy, buzzy, black-and-yellow pollinators get exposed to heavy metals in their environment—and what it can mean to their survival.
Supported by a highly competitive National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship, Scott hopes to contribute to what’s known about pollinator decline—the mysterious drop-off in bumble bees, honey bees, and other insect pollinators around the world, including in the United States and Ohio.
Scott’s goal, she says, is to “really understand how human factors affect pollinators, and where to best add habitat for them.” Her advisor is CFAES entomology professor Mary Gardiner.
Wild bumble bees, like honey bees, collect pollen from flowers and live in colonies.
Heavy metals, which are toxicants, come from both natural and human sources, including factory emissions, vehicle exhaust, and dust from old lead paint.
Sometimes, in urban areas, heavy metals can get in the soil, where plants may take them up.
Do foraging pollinators take them up, too?
To find out, Scott keeps several hundred bumble bees inside each of 12 room-sized tents at CFAES’ Waterman Agricultural and Natural Resources Laboratory, located at Ohio State’s Columbus campus.
To learn more about students like Sarah who are depending on you to support research efforts across CFAES, please contact Emily Kruse at 614-247-7606 or kruse.192@osu.edu.
Scott feeds her subjects pollen and sugar water containing realistic real-world concentrations of one or a combination of four heavy metals—cadmium, chromium, arsenic, and lead.
Eventually, she collects the bees, measures the heavy metals in their bodies, and counts the numbers of pupae, larvae, and adults—a sign of the colony’s health, or lack of it.
“I’ve always been a question-driven person—very curious. I’ve always been very excited about my research—when we’re getting the data and the story’s unfolding. ... The next step is putting the science into action.”Sarah Scott
For now, Scott isn’t certain how wild bumble bees get exposed to heavy metals. It could be from pollen, water, or dust. One possibility: the bees’ hairy bodies, which carry a slight electrical charge, may serve as “flying Swiffers,” she says.
Pollinator decline, whose possible causes also include pesticides and parasites, is a problem for more than pollinators. Food crops that need insect pollination, including about a third of the crops grown in America, are at risk, too.
Scott, whose first field research experience involved elephants and other large mammals in Uganda, says she’s happy to be working with their tiny friends now. She says she hopes her findings are used to create new, healthy habitat for them.
“The strength of science is how far its impact goes,” Scott says. “What’s the point of learning something if it’s just going to sit on a bookshelf?”
Scholarships received:
- James E. Tew Extension and Outreach Award, 2020
- Delong Research Talk Competition, 2019