All eyes focus on it! WANTED!

PhD has started! Three month has past since I came to USP and many things have changed in my life.

The BeeLab is awesome!

My PhD project concerns about the interaction between oil collecting bees and Krameria species. Krameriaceae is a small group with just one genus and 18 species. Five (or six because there is a new species to be described) of them occur in Brazil. This time I'm looking for the populations for sampling.

This one is K. tomentosa, the most spread.

So if you find them, contact me. ;)

Have you ever seen males of a solitary bee species sleeping?

During the night the females of solitary bee species usually sleep or rest inside the nest (made mainly in wood or soil), taking care of her brood, of course. But what about the males?

The life of males of bee species is generally a little known. After emerging, males begin to search females for mating. This process consists in intercepting the female during her flight or mating directly on the flower while the female is foraging. Besides, the males also interact with each other while delimiting their territories. However, while females are resting in her nest what do they use to do?

They also rest! Instead of resting inside the nest, they usually do in flowers or flower buds as you see in the picture.

Here are two Lanthanomelissa males resting. These were sleeping during the morning...

The photo was captured in Rio Grande do Sul (Pro-Mata) in december 2010.

Wild pollinators x Honey Bees

Last week an interesting Science article was released with some brazillian researchers as co-authors and it had a good repercussion on one of the main news website of our country (see here). I think this is awesome for spreading the importance of pollination studies and the conservation of wild bees.

Wild pollinators (regarding mainly wild bees) are not popularly known and need conservation and outreach programs.

People just know the bee species that produce honey as honey bees, the most known. Media is not interested in publishing this kind of subject and due to it people knowledge doesn't comprise an important issue like that.

The specialized literature has published a lot of studies about problems with the presence of the generalist honey bees (and their races) in many types of landscape. We know that honey bees are good pollinators for many crops and wild plant species, but the wild ones are better. Besides we have concerned about competition between them and honey bees (see my article about this here).

We also know that honey bees are economically important in honey production and produce it more than stingless bees, for example.

However, it is a good time to obtain more data and get them into practice.

Science for all

The one who has spoken more is the one who does not know and not have arguments. That one uses to say "it is like that" while should say "I think it's like that". You must say "it is like that" if you have consistent and well based data. For us, researchers, it is difficult to assert so. Sometimes we prefer to say, even with good data, that "they just suggest that".

Well, this colleague's speech represents what the scientific community wants to say about "religion commanding our lives", not only about homosexual beings.
Our society needs data and does not subjective arguments, because we're not an individual thinking, we are a population who needs a sampling which represent it.

Rational beings?

In this early involvement with environmental issues, I have reflected a lot about environmental policies and mindset of society in general on environment. Perhaps it would be better to say: reflection on the natural pathway of human thinking. How not thinking and then not imposing a structure on the basis of environmental preservation and conservation since the beginning of human interference? Is that the price of the feature "rationality"? Is calling human beings "rational" coherent with life?

The Biologist Human Being: a conception

That’s awesome as each field of knowledge gives a different world view for its professional. 

Unfortunately we can’t delve into all areas.

Biology and its subareas give us, in my opinion, one of the most pretty world views: the environmental and biodiversity notion in all their branches. That’s why I think there would be biologists forward every activity related to environment, not wanting to take the importance of other professionals out as environmental and chemical engineers, among others. Perhaps things would work more and better. Well, I don’t know. I’ll try to get more arguments for this my conception. 

As you can perceive, I'm a pollination biologist who is trying to understand the things toward the environmental management and issues. I got masters in Zoology and I'm about to start a PhD in Ecology from USP.

I'm really enjoying to study about environmental management and policies.

As a First Bud

The moment when all the floral whorls are being prepared to mature; before they provide their functionallity to the plant and its interactions with the pollinator. Here is the bud - a precursor fase of a fascinating relationship molded by the evolution. Well, as a floral bud, I start.