Landscape Ecology of Insects
This fall, the Gratton Lab hosted UW-Madison sophomore Celeste Huff for a Zoology 152 independent project. She chose to investigate the floral preferences of local bumble bees in early fall, asking whether different bumble bee species associate with different suites of flowers to fulfill their nutritional needs. With the help of graduate student Taylor Tai, …
Much of the research we do in the Gratton Lab focuses on the pests and pollinators of agricultural crops grown in Wisconsin. Former lab member Emma Pelton (M.S. 2015) did her research on an invasive fruit fly, the spotted wing drosophila (Drosophila suzukii), which is a recently introduced pest of soft-skinned fruit and a potential …
Several of the Gratton Lab members travelled to Denver in early November for the annual meetings of the Entomological Society of America. Claudio helped to organize two symposia, while a few Gratton lab members gave talks. Brian Spiesman – talk entitled: “Landscape-scale resource continuity for enhanced biological control” Jeremy Hemberger – talk entitled: “Temporal resource …
We’ve recently welcomed a few new members to our lab group. Here is a short introduction. Olivia Bernauer joined the lab in June as a lab technician. She is a 2014 graduate of UW-Madison and recently finished her M.S. degree at the University of Maryland in the lab of Dennis van Engelsdorp. Can you tell …
Recently, lab technician Olivia Bernauer and post-doc Hannah Gaines Day put together a brochure about the wild bee pollinators found in Wisconsin apple orchards which was handed out to apple growers at the 2017 Field Day at one of our research partner farms, Green’s Pleasant Springs Orchard. This brochure summarizes information about the most important …