Bees are in trouble. As we pave over and heat up the planet, more and more of the roughly 20,000 species of wild bees are being lost. This crisis not only jeopardizes bee biodiversity, but also the crops and native plants that depend on bees for pollination. Although scientists around the world have spent years conducting research on the stressors that harm bees, actual solutions remain limited.
The Hammer Lab at UC Irvine is working to reverse bee declines using a novel toolkit: the gut microbiome. For bees as for humans, beneficial bacteria in the gut help digest food and ward off pathogen infection. Scientists in the Hammer Lab are studying how bee gut health is impacted by stressors and are developing microbiome-based solutions for the bee crisis. Through this work, the lab is also training undergraduate and graduate students to become the next generation of scientist-stewards for our changing planet.
Your Giving Day gift to the Ecology & Evolutionary Biology fund will support students and research staff working on the following initiatives:
- Determine how climate change and pesticides impact bumble bee health via disruption of the microbiome.
- Develop robust probiotic strains that reduce the spread of disease among wild bees, other pollinators, and flowers.
- Discover the optimal species of plants that could be grown in farms and urban areas of California as “prebiotics” to sustain bee gut health, nutrition, and pollination services.
With your help, we can redouble our efforts to protect wild bees through microbiome research. Thank you for your support!
| Rank | State | Gifts |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | CA | 1 |
| 2 | AA | 0 |
| 2 | AE | 0 |
