Video: Bees at the Wilds

Check out this very cool video about Karen Goodell's research on plant/pollinator interactons, specifically the bee population in an Ohio conservation center on reclaimed strip-mine land. Dr. Goodell is a professor at my old graduate school department at OSU. You can read more about her research in the campus faculty/staff newspaper.

From the feature on OSU's website:

Karen Goodell has a fact that might surprise you: "About 70 percent of flowering plants, including one in three bites of food we eat, require pollination by a bee."

Goodell, a professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at Ohio State's Newark campus, is interested in bee populations. At the Wilds--a southern Ohio conservation center located on reclaimed strip mine land--she is studying the relationship between bee communities and prairie habitats.

"Bees are really the organisms that are moving genes around for plants," she says. "Pollinators are absolutely essential for agricultural production. We need to understand what makes their populations thrive."

Goodell’s two projects use 72 different locations dispersed around the Wilds; Ohio State students help her collect data.

"Being a freshman and getting an internship is amazing," says Stephany Chicaiza, who spent the summer after her first year at Ohio State working with Goodell. "I think it puts me at a different level."

Originally posted at Scientific American on September 29, 2011.