It wasn’t until my first entomology class at Colorado State University as an undergraduate that I learned that working with insects was something one could pursue for their career. Though, like many other naturalists and entomologists, my passion started very early in life. The living, breathing, and thriving ecosystems that surround us or that we cultivate in our gardens strike us with awe and wonder, but the organisms that I found most interesting were the small arthropods and the plants associated with them. Even more specifically, I was drawn to pollinators and their behaviors within garden microcosms. I would spend many hours of my younger years observing and interacting with small ground nesting bees that dotted gravelly areas, and watching all kinds of species that visited the blooms around the neighborhood. Although pollinators are what I had always been striving to work with, my life led me in many different entomological directions.

After graduating from Colorado State University with a degree in Wildlife Biology and Conservation (they did not offer entomology as a major at the time unfortunately), the very first opportunity I had was to work at an invertebrate zoo called the Butterfly Pavilion where I worked with so many different invertebrate species and also started beekeeping, which I kept doing for about 12 years. From there, my experiences included working with mosquitoes and predacious ground beetles at NEON (National Ecological Observatory Network), work with aquatic insects at the USGS National Water Quality Lab, and work with disease vectoring arthropods across the U.S. with the USDA National Wildlife Research Center. These experiences led me to apply for graduate school at Colorado State University, so that I could refine my entomological interests and expertise.

I started my Master’s degree in in 2021 in bio-agricultural sciences, specializing in entomology. I worked with a virus that was a relatively new pest in chile peppers in Southern Colorado, vectored by aphids. The goal of this research was to investigate methods to manage virus incidence in chile pepper systems using cultural control methods, such as fine-tuning planting dates or identifying and using resistant plant varieties. We found some very promising varieties that showed resistance through field and greenhouse experiments. An added benefit was that I was able to bring home hundreds of pounds of chile peppers! Throughout my Master’s I was also able to collaborate on quinoa research and hemp, graduating in 2023. I learned that I really love research and outreach, but pollinators were still at the front of my mind. If I were to continue in academia, it had to be studying and working directly with them.

That brings me to today. I started my doctoral studies in the Garden Ecology lab early this year under the advisement of Dr. Gail Langellotto. Gail and I share tremendous interest and passion for pollinator behavioral ecology and conservation. I am interested in exploring some Jen Haye’s preliminary findings, which suggest that we can select and plant floral resources in gardens in ways that alleviate competitive pressures from honey bees, to achieve a more sustainable coexistence with native, wild bees. Honey bees are here to stay, and they will almost always outcompete native bees in some way. I am interested in understanding how we can design and manage our gardens to provide a more harmonious habitat for them both. If this resonates with you, please consider signing up for my summer research project.

This summer, I am seeking 30 gardens (10, each, in Corvallis, Eugene, and Portland metro regions) that have pollinator gardens. If you are interested in allowing our research team to visit your garden for this study, please take this short survey by June 6, 2025. If your garden is selected for study, we will visit in late June or mid-July to document the plants in  your pollinator garden. We will use this data to:

We will be documenting plants in these pollinator gardens so that we can:

• ***Document the most common pollinator plants being cultivated by Oregon gardeners,
• ***Relate garden plantings to the types of pollinators supported (e.g. bees, flies, and/or butterflies),
• ***Determine the seasonal extent of pollinator garden resources (summer only, or also covering early spring and summer, and
• ***Estimate the standing crop of resources available to pollinators within these pollinator gardens.

We will also be looking for plants in or around gardens that are considered magnet plants for honey bees and other the yellow-faced bumble bee. Magnet plants include those that provide large quantities of nectar, are highly attractive to the worker caste of eusocial bees, and that can draw abundant, eusocial bees away from the plants that native bees favor. I will study magnet plants in a manipulative field experiment, where I will document pollinator behavior on garden plantings, with and without magnet plants.