I am an Assistant Professor of Biology at Kalamazoo College. I am broadly interested in bee ecology, population ecology, and understanding how bees interact with their environments in natural and managed ecosystems. I use a combination of landscape, field cage, and lab experiments to study these interactions at different scales.
I completed my Ph.D. in Ecology at the University of California, Davis in 2022, where I studied the effects of pesticide exposure and resource stress on wild bee fitness and behavior. As a USDA NIFA Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Riverside, I explored the impacts of climate change on solitary bee development and fitness.
Interests
Bee ecology and behavior
Climate change
Agroecology
Conservation
Education
Ph.D. in Ecology, 2022
University of California, Davis
B.A. in Environmental Studies, 2014
Earlham College
Research
Monitoring Osmia lignaria nests
Impacts of pesticide exposure and resource scarcity on bees. Bees provide critical ecosystem services, but they face a range of stressors that threaten their populations. Disentangling the effects of these stressors is a primary challenge in understanding how to mitigate ongoing bee declines and develop practical solutions to ensure their persistence. I have conducted manipulative field experiments in flight cages to explore the individual and combined effects of pesticide and floral resource stressors on native bee reproduction and behavior. I am also interested in the potential for wildflower plantings to mitigate the negative effects of pesticide exposure in agricultural landscapes. Because stress can affect individuals and populations long after direct exposure, I have also explored the carryover effects of past pesticide exposure on bee reproduction and population growth rate. Ongoing projects include (1) determining when and where bees experience the greatest pesticide risks in agricultural landscapes, and (2) understanding the long-term impacts of pesticide exposure on bee physiology.
Impacts of climate change on solitary bees. Although climate warming has been linked to dramatic declines in some bee populations, we have limited understanding of the mechanisms underlying these trends. I am interested in the effects of climate warming on plant and bee phenology, as well as the impacts of extreme climate events, like heatwaves, on bee development and survival. Current research includes investigating the impacts of heatwaves on early bee development across multiple populations, as well as identifying molecular mechanisms associated with heat stress and resilience in bees.
Kanaski, A.M.,* Stuligross, C.,* Pareja, J. and Tori, W. 2012. Long-tailed Manakin (Chiroxiphia linearis). Birds of the World (T.S. Schulenberg, editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY. (* = co-first authors)
