written by Harriet Harris

Dr. Stephania Sandoval Arango is an entomologist and evolutionary biologist working at the USDA Bee Lab in Beltsville, Maryland. In addition to expanding on what we know about bees, she focuses on who gets to ask these questions in the first place. As a queer, Colombian scientist working in the U.S., her perspective brings richness and diversity to evolutionary biology, one that reflects the intersectional reality of science today.

written by: Jillian Stewart

Entomology has a new downstairs neighbor in the Plant Sciences Department! He’s an invasive species ecologist, but don’t worry, he’s here to collaborate. Dr. Dan Buonaiuto studies how climate change affects biodiversity and the functions of plant communities with a particular focus on phenology. Phenology is the timing of lifecycle events in an organism’s life: when it emerges from dormancy, when it molts, when it mates, and what factors influence this timing.

How is climate change influencing plant phenology? Plants rely on temperature cues and light periods to determine when they flower, leaf out, and go dormant (Buonaiuto et al, 2023). In many plants, the sequence of flowering and leafing in the spring is very important to their reproductive success. Some plants leaf first, others flower first. Many plants produce hermaphroditic flowers -each flower has male and female gametes. Other plants are monoecious, where the male and female flowers are separate but still on one plant. Some plants produce their male flowers first, others produce the female flower. This temporal separation of male and female is called dichogamy and can be a delicate balance! Leafing, male flowering, and female flowering can all have different phenological sensitivities to climate change (figure one). This can make reproduction in monoecious plants particularly vulnerable to warming. Many monoecious plants cannot self-fertilize. If their male and female flowers overlap too much, the female flowers may become clogged with pollen from the same tree. This can reduce the reproductive output of a tree or, if the pollen is usable, reduce the genetic diversity of offspring. Reduced genetic diversity can impede a species’ ability to adapt to changing conditions like climate change (Buonaiuto, 2024).