Evangeline Ballerini
California State University-Sacramento, CA·Ecology & Evolution
Most flowering plants depend on animals to carry their pollen, and many reward these visitors with nectar, a mix of sugars and other nutrients. Bees, hummingbirds and moths have different nutritional needs.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Plant Science & Agriculture
Genetics
- Topics
nectar
pollination
plant-pollinator interactions
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Describe nectar volume and chemistry in four Aquilegia species adapted to bees, hummingbirds or hawk moths, using developmental assays, transcriptomics and metabolomics.
- Identify genetic loci controlling differences in nectar traits, including metabolites, between hummingbird-pollinated A. formosa and hawk moth–pollinated A. pubescens through high-resolution genetic mapping.
- Test how temperature and humidity affect nectar production and composition in two Aquilegia species, comparing wild populations with plants grown under controlled conditions.
More about the research
Plants adapted to each type of pollinator produce different amounts and kinds of nectar. Yet little is known about the genes that control this variation, and few studies have measured nectar chemistry in detail. About 35% of crops rely on animal pollinators, so understanding nectar could matter for agriculture as well as for how new plant species form.
Why it matters
Many food crops depend on animal pollinators. Identifying genes that control nectar volume and chemistry could eventually help breeders improve nectar quality and pollination efficiency, which may raise crop yields. The work also shows how pollinators drive plant diversity and how temperature and humidity shape nectar.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Lena Hileman
University of Kansas, KS·Ecology & Evolution
Confirm about twenty genomic regions that distinguish bee- from hummingbird-pollinated Penstemon species, using genome-wide association mapping to link them to floral syndrome traits.
William Petry
North Carolina State University, NC·Ecology & Evolution
Experimentally amplify natural year-to-year variation in pollination for thousands of tagged perennial plants of two species, using increased, reduced and unmanipulated pollination treatments in a long-term field experiment.
Xuan Zhuang
University of Arkansas, AR·Genetics·Early-career
Identify precursor sequences and mechanisms of gene birth for type I antifreeze proteins by comparing genomes of AFPI-bearing fishes with close relatives that lack these ice-binding genes.
The school
California State University-Sacramento: 3 labs on PI Pages, $34M a year on research, 19 research doctorates a year.
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