Co-principal investigators of the $24,000 grant are Neal Williams, assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Entomology, and Jocelyn Millar, professor of entomology at UC Riverside.
The grant is spearheaded by evolutionary ecologist Leslie Saul-Gershenz, a Ph.D. student in the UC Davis Department of Entomology and co-founder of SaveNature.Org.
“[Our project] will help to protect this important pollinator by providing land managers with crucial information on its nesting requirements, to help reduce the impacts from land development and high-impact recreational use,” she said. “Our work will focus on species from the bee species-rich Mojave Desert ecosystem to the coastal dunes in Oregon.”
Saul-Gershenz researches a species of digger bee, Habropoda pallida, a solitary ground-nesting bee, and its nest parasite, a blister beetle, Meloe franciscanus.
The researchers also will study the mechanisms that "mediate the interaction between digger bees and a wide-ranging nest parasite known to parasitize multiple pollinator species," Saul-Gershenz said. "Such information could help to mitigate potential impacts on important pollinators."