USU graduate student Jesse Anjin Tabor operating a UAV to explore flowering plant availability in the Bear River Mountains of Utah, USA.
 Non-native bumble bees impacts. Commercially available bumble bee (Bombus) colonies pollinate hothouse and open field crops in the USA, but mounting evidence indicates that they can negatively impact the health and persistence of native Bombus should individuals escape into the wild. The common eastern bumble bee, Bombus impatiens, is a commercially produced species that has escaped from culture and is rapidly expanding outside of its endemic range of eastern North America. In collaboration with a team of researchers from the Washington Department of Agriculture, Simon Fraser University, University of Oregon, and the Ohio State University, we aim to characterize the impact of B. impatiens on native Pacific Northwest Bombus communities by exploring landscape factors that influence its spread, and its impacts on Bombus community structure, competition for floral resources, pathogen loading and diversity, and immune response of native congeners. Below is a Shiny web application (that demonstrates the rapid spread of B. impatiens overtime relative a common native bumble bee, B. vosnesenskii in the Pacific Northwest. Research supported by USDA-NIFA Grant #2022-67013-36286. You can also find the application at this website: https://jonathanbkoch.shinyapps.io/PNWimpatiensapp/. 
PictureMale Drosophila suzukii. CC Wikimedia
Evolution of an Invasive Species. Biological invaders can be a global problem as they negatively impact economic markets and ecosystems. Within a few generations of establishment some non-native species have been found to persist and adapt to novel environments, exhibit increased growth rates, and acquire behavioral traits that promote their invasion success. Drosophila suzukii (SWD) is such an invader. It is a world-wide agricultural pest and has also emerged as a model species to study the evolution of invasiveness. The fellowship research aims to identify the evolutionary mechanisms that have enabled SWD to invade and adapt to the mosaic of ecosystems found in Hawaiʻi. Activities include a survey of SWD populations throughout the major Hawaiian Islands and genome sequencing. Elucidating the mechanisms that drive a biological invasion increases understanding of the genetic processes that promote the persistence of immigrant species.  NSF award info here.

​Read the paper here. 
PictureChilling a bee on snow to sample DNA near in Olympic National Park.
Landscape Genetics. Illuminating the relationship between environmental variation and the distribution of genetic diversity is an underlying goal of biodiversity studies. As part of my dissertation I studied the population genetic diversity and structure of bumble bees distributed in the Pacific Northwest. My results found  that genetic diversity and differentiation are largely determined by a species' distribution. Species limited to high elevation habitats  exhibit significant pair-wise genetic differentiation across geographic distance, specifically the Forest Bumble Bee, Bombus sylvicola. Whereas, bumble bee populations that are broadly distributed across an elevation gradient like Yellow Head Bumble Bee, B. flavifrons,  and the Black Tail Bumble Bee, B. melanopygus, do not exhibit significant pair-wise genetic differentiation.  The results of this study are published in a special issue of Conservation Genetics.

Read the paper here. 

​Support for this research was provided in part by the North Coast and Cascades Science Learning Network and the Utah State University Ecology Center. 
PicturePopulation genetic structure of the Hunt bumble bee, Bombus huntii.
Wild population genetics of a commercially viable pollinator. Bumble bees contribute significantly to crop pollination worldwide, second only to the European honey bee. However, since the collapse of commercial Bombus occidentalis populations due to pathogen outbreaks in rearing facilities, western North America has been without a commercially available native bumble bee pollinator. In collaboration with Rémy Vandeme (in addition to my adviser, Jamie Strange), I explore wild population genetic diversity and niche of the commercially viable bumble bee, B. huntii. Three genetic clusters across the range of B. huntii: a USA-Canada cluster, a North Mexico cluster, and a South Mexico cluster. Genetic distance was correlated with geographic distance among the two Mexican clusters, but not in the USA/northern-Mexico cluster. Ecologically, the Mexico populations inhabit a distinct niche relative to USA and Canada populations. The data show significant structuring of B. huntii populations in Mexico, but not in the USA/Canada. Based on these results, the movement of B. huntii populations has the potential to introduce novel genetic material that may impact the evolutionary heritage and disease ecology of locally adapted B. huntii populations.

Read the paper here.
PictureBombus irisanensis collected at Mt. Isarog Natural Park, Philippines and uploaded to iNaturalist (https://www.inaturalist.org/obser vations/33270208). Photo from Wilson et al. (2020) [see publications].
Bumble Bees of the Philippines. One of my most exciting (and continuing) adventure to date is the opportunity to collaborate with scientists at the University of the Philippines - Los Baños Natural History Museum to study the bubuyog - the bumble bees - of the Philippines. For me, personally, it has been a dream to work in the Philippines as I am a 1.5 generation immigrant to the United States and have strong roots in the bontoc of Bayombong and Sison. Thus, the feeling I have for this project as a balikbayan scientist are indescribable! Some research products to come out so far in this project include a paper characterizing the distribution and status of two bubuyog species in the Philippines. You can read about this project here.

Learn how NHCs help support  the conservation of bumble bees here -> IGNITE presentation at #ESA100.

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