Highly social bees like honeybees have wildly different patterns of reproduction and longevity than their solitary counterparts. However, there is very little known about the mechanisms of these patterns, investigating how the mechanisms and patterns of life history trade-offs in a flexibly social organism may provide clues as to how behavior and evolutionary ecology interact. 

Although managed solitary bees are key pollinators to crops like alfalfa and almonds, there is very little known about how immune challenges impact their physiology and therefore their capability to pollinate. I’ve been testing how injection of an immune response impacts reproductive capacity, longevity, and patterns of RNA across the lifespan of N. melanderi, the alkali bee. 

Organisms face different immune challenges based on whether they interact with other organisms or remain solitary. However, it’s unknown how this might affect bees. I have been researching how bees in the same habitats but of different social behaviors may trade-off their immune response activity from either an internal or an external response.