The Mary T. Carothers Summer Environmental Studies Scholarship

Preferences of Petal-Cutting Bees

Mead’s undergraduate research thesis will study a Pacific Northwest wildflower, farewell-to-spring, and the leafcutter bees that harvest the flower’s petals for their nests. By comparing leafcutter bee usage of native subspecies of farewell-to-spring to its nonnative subspecies and cultivars, Mead seeks to draw conclusions about the potential importance of planting native varieties of farewell-to-spring for ecological gardening and restoration to facilitate pollinator-plant interaction.