Lynn Adler
Professor of Biology | University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst, MA, UNITED STATES
Lynn Adler examines the interaction between flowers, pollinator (especially bees) and pathogens.
Expertise (5)
Bee-Pathogen Dynamics
Ecology and Evolution of Insect-Plant Interactions
Plant-Animal Interactions
Floral Traits
Bees
Biography
Lynn Adler's research focuses on the role specific flowers can play in transmitting or preventing the transmission of pathogens to pollinators — especially bees — as well as how certain floral species seem to be a kind of “super food” that keep bees healthy.
Adler won the Mahoney Life Sciences Prize for her research demonstrating that different kinds of wildflowers can have markedly different effects on the health and reproduction rate of bumblebees.
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Education (2)
University of California at Davis: Ph.D., Population Biology
Brown University: B.S., Biology
Links (4)
Select Recent Media Coverage (3)
New research finds surprising science behind bumble bee superfood
Phys.org online
2023-04-05
"It's no good curing the common cold if you starve the patient," says Lynn Adler, professor of biology at UMass Amherst and the senior author of the paper looking at sunflower pollen and queen bee production. "We need to look at the community level, as well as what's happening in bees' guts, to know how to help them respond to stressful environments," says Adler.
Sunflowers make bees poop—a lot. Here's why that's good.
National Geographic online
2022-12-05
“Many plant defensive compounds can be medicinal at certain doses,” Adler says. After all, “most of our human medicines come from plants.”
Conservation strategy found to increase disease in bumble bees
Earth.com online
2020-05-11
“In a prior study, we evaluated 15 plant species by putting the same amount of C. bombi on each, letting a bee forage, and then seeing whether and how bad of an infection it developed,” said study co-author Professor Lynn S. Adler of UMass Amherst. “We used that to designate plant species as ‘high/low infection’ for this study.”
Select Publications (2)
Differential bumble bee gene expression associated with pathogen infection and pollen diet
BMC GenomicsJonathan J. Giacomini, Lynn S. Adler, Benjamin J. Reading & Rebecca E. Irwin
2023-03-29
Recently, it was discovered that consumption of sunflower (Helianthus annuus) pollen reduced severity of gut protozoan pathogen Crithidia bombi infection in Bombus impatiens bumble bees.
The intersection of bee and flower sexes: pollen presence shapes sex-specific bee foraging associations in sunflower
Environmental EntomologyJustin C Roch, Rosemary Malfi, Jennifer I Van Wyk, Deicy Carolina Muñoz Agudelo, Joan Milam, Lynn S Adler
2023-03-24
Foraging preferences are known to differ among bee taxa, and can also differ between male and female bees of the same species. Similarly, bees can prefer a specific flower sex, particularly if only one sex provides pollen...
