AVERY ROE
Global
Experiences
Bee Research in Lesvos, Greece
With a team of undergraduate researchers, I traveled to Greece for two months to study the incredible diversity of bees on the Mediterranean island of Lesvos. We worked in collaboration with researchers at the University of the Aegean to explore the impacts of climate change on bees, including differing physiological thermal and desiccation tolerance between species, trends in bee diversity of time, the impacts of land use change, and foraging dynamics in a warming environment. While in Greece, we stayed at a family-run hotel and made connections with the local community while spreading the word about bee conservation.
As an international experience, my time on Lesvos highlighted the importance of making connections across borders to tackle large-scale problems like climate change. In a world filled with conflict, joining forces to protect the planet which sustains us is more important than ever. I learned about Greek culture from a first-person perspective, enjoying home cooked meals, making connections to the dry hillsides and salty Aegean sea, and visiting historical sites which have shaped human history. This experience taught me more than just how bees interact with their environments. It showed me how to be a respectful and global citizen, soak up knowledge from communities unlike my own, and see the beauty and power in our multifaceted global community.
To culminate my experience, I presented a research poster describing the impacts of temperature of the volume of nectar avalible to bees throughout the day to our international collaborators and at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology Annual meeting in Atlanta, GA. It was wonderful to reconnect with my friends from the trip and bring our findings from Greece back to the United States.
These are some (but not all) highlights from my two month stay on Lesvos, Greece.
Navigating Nylanderia
As a second year student at UF I took a course based undergraduate research class lead by Drs. John Williams, Andrea Lucky, and Anthony Auletta. As a 30 student class we preformed a taxonomic revision of the ant genus Nylanderia, a widespread group of ants with diverse biologies, morphologies, and impacts. Species in this group range from highly invasive to endemic to certain regions of the world, so reliable identification is important for eradication and conservation efforts. Our class focused on samples from the Guatemalan cloud forests filled with hundreds of ants only found in this unique environment. Using morphometric indices, the ratio of body parts to one another, we were able to identify over 20 new species of endemic ants! I was selected as one of the student to present out findings at the annual Entomological Society of America Conference. At the conference I got to meet experts in my field from all over the country and the globe and share our exiting discoveries. This class demonstrated a new approach to taxonomic research which opens the doors for all undergraduate students to get a taste for scientific research.
An theme of the course was international scientific collaboration. We had discussions about ethical international science, collaborating with local researchers and community members, and sharing our findings with other scientists but also local communities who welcome international researchers. As a final deliverable in the course I interview Phil Honle, an ant research from the Chechen Republic conducting research in Papua New Guinea. He shared his experience with conducting research abroad, including stories about his local collaborators. In fact, he made one of his guides and friends from Papua New Guinea a co-author on his publication, an uncommon practice, to give him credit for the ecolocial knowledge he contributed to the piece.
This class built my confidence as a new researcher while exposing me to the value and neccessity of international collaborative research. It also inspired me to pursue the International Scholars Program and research aboad!
