Elizabeth Nicholls

Behavioural flexibility masks delayed costs of environmental instability

This study shows that environmental instability affects bumblebee foraging behavior over time, with delayed costs not captured by immediate performance measures.

Warming limits energetic investment in feeding and post-feeding metabolism in bumblebees

This study shows that warming reduces thermogenic investment and postprandial metabolic responses in bumblebees, limiting their energetic flexibility under climate change.

MetaBeeAI: an AI pipeline for structured evidence extraction from biological literature

MetaBeeAI extracts structured evidence from biological literature using a modular LLM pipeline with expert validation, improving consistency and reproducibility across studies.

First direct quantification of floral handling costs in bees

The paper quantifies the metabolic cost of floral buzzing in bumblebees and shows it is energetically significant, comparable to flight take-off.

Understanding pollination in urban food production: the importance of data validation and participant feedback for citizen science project design

This study evaluates a citizen science approach for monitoring pollination in urban farming, finding that grower-collected data overestimates crop-insect relationships and highlights the need for participant feedback to improve data accuracy and engagement.

Gustatory sensitivity to amino acids in bumblebees

This study investigates bumblebees' gustatory sensitivity to valine and lysine, finding valine detection at low concentrations but no response to lysine, suggesting receptor specificity.

A spatially explicit model of pollinator-plant-pathogen interactions

This paper develops an individual-based model to study how pollinator behavior and floral landscape structure influence pathogen spread through floral hotspots.

Shifts in honeybee worker metabolism immediately post-eclosion

This study measures honeybee metabolic rates post-eclosion and finds they increase significantly in the first 48 hours, with restrained measurements overestimating resting metabolic rate.