Within a community, bee-visited plants differ dramatically in their offering of pollen and nectar. Some offer pollen alone, others nectar alone, and many offer both resources. Even within a reward category such as pollen, protein and lipid content can vary in ways that are meaningful to bee foraging and performance.

Work by former graduate student Jacob Francis (in prep) explores how the holistic nutritional composition of plants’ nectar and pollen predict pollen transfer within co-flowering communities.

Recent and ongoing work by collaborator Anthony Vaudo has taken a deep dive into how pollen macronutrient content among over 100 local wildflowers structures interactions with our native bees (PNAS 2024).