Research

Arthropod symbiosis: elucidating how dispensable interactions between arthropods and those with other organisms develop, stabilize, and adapt along the transition to symbiosis.

Pollinator Health: assessing the multiple interacting factors leading to the globally observed decline in pollinator health and testing methods to mitigate this decline.

Parasite Behavior: parasitic/parasitoid organisms employ novel methods to live in or on hosts and exploit them for resources. Better understanding of these methods could lead to new means of managing parasites that cause economic or medical injury.

Melittophiles and Other non-Apis Hive Associates: deepening our understanding of how hive associates remain in honey bee colonies despite evolutionarily refined instincts of the host to exclude these organisms. Methods such as providing a significant service to the bees, avoiding detection through complex camouflage, or taking advantage of only the weak and unguarded are sparsely studied strategies but may be integral to disrupting negative relations or promoting those that lead to greater colony health.

Honey Bee Resistance/Resilience: deepening knowledge of how the other 11 species of honey bees residing in Southeast Asia, aside from the cosmopolitan Apis mellifera, thrive in the face of the same stress factors and how we can translate those traits to our population of honey bees.