Micki Palmersheim: Creating the perfect pollinator refuge
The following story was written in November 2021 by Michael Blair in ENGL 4824: Science Writing as part of a collaboration between the English department and the Center for Communicating Science.
Some researchers focus on a topic that has fascinated them since childhood. Virginia Tech graduate student Micki Palmersheim discovered her current passion–helping pollinators–by trying to avoid cow poop.
As a sophomore at North Dakota State University, Palmersheim approached her evolution professor about research experience. She was offered two opportunities: a job that involved “raising flies, having them breed together, and collecting cow poop to feed them”–or a project researching baby honeybees.
Palmersheim’s passion for bees and other pollinators was born in that moment.
There are as many as 1,500 different animal species that are classified as pollinators, each vital to the world we live in today. Among these are bees, butterflies, flies, and other insects. A pollinator is any animal that carries pollen between two plants, and pollinators are needed to maintain plant health.
Palmersheim has taken it upon herself to research pollinators to help their populations thrive. Without pollinators, our food supply would drastically diminish, as plants would not be able to sustain themselves. Of the top 107 global crops, 96 rely either completely or partially on insect pollination. Researching pollinators can help ensure they keep doing their job.
After graduating from North Dakota State University with a bachelor’s degree in biology, Palmersheim took a job as a U.S Department of Agriculture lab assistant researching bees in North Dakota. It was through this job that Palmersheim eventually met Maggie Couvillon, a Virginia Tech faculty member. Soon after, Palmersheim made the trek from North Dakota to southwestern Virginia to join Couvillon’s lab in the fall of 2019 as a graduate student and continue researching and studying insects.
Palmersheim explained that one of the largest issues pollinators currently face is their declining population due to habitat loss. Urban development and agricultural fields are taking over prairies, flower fields, and other prominent habitats for pollinators.
For this reason, Palmersheim geared her research towards creating the perfect habitat for pollinators. She described her project as “trying to create little refuges within urban areas and places that don’t have the needed natural resources.” To create the perfect habitat, Palmersheim is trying to find the flowers that are most attractive to pollinators.
Palmersheim planted two large flower gardens here in Blacksburg to try to narrow down the search for the perfect flowers. Palmersheim consulted pollinator planting recommendation lists and plant experts at Virginia Tech for their advice on what flowers to include in her gardens. After selecting 25 different flowers to test, she randomly planted each species in both of her garden plots.
She spent more than two years collecting and analyzing data on each flower. Specifically, she counts and identifies the pollinators and insects that visit each flower throughout the day to determine the flowers most attractive to pollinators.
A lot of time and effort behind the scenes goes into this research, which was funded through a donation made by Kaeser Compressors. Over the summer, Palmersheim fills her schedule with tending to the gardens and data collection. Most of this time is spent removing persistent weeds to ensure good conditions for her plants.
Palmersheim said data collection and garden tending “would have been impossible without help.” Over the course of her research, Palmersheim had the help of 18 Virginia Tech students. Because of the number of observations Palmersheim needed to take, at least one helper was needed at most times. One person would steadily observe a flower patch to count pollinators while the other would take notes on an iPad. Palmersheim has made a total of 27,231 individual observations over the past two years.
The final stage of her research was data analysis and modeling her data to make sense of the results from her two-year research endeavor. Her thesis, Ornamental Plants Impact Insect Pollinator Abundance and Diversity in Gardens, summarizes all of her findings.
Palmersheim hopes that her results might “promote [pollinator] habitat conservation and advocate making pollinator gardens.” Because different climates affect the pollinator species found in an environment, her project is specifically designed for southwestern Virginia. The plant species that are most attractive to pollinators in this study may not be suitable for other regions or equally attractive elsewhere. “It would be great if people would keep doing similar research in other regions of the world” to collect more data, she says.
After her thesis was completed last fall, Palmersheim graduated with a master’s degree in entomology, the study of insects. Today, she continues to look for ways to help improve products and practices in agriculture to help maintain food security and to encourage sustainable solutions.
Palmersheim recently accepted a position with Aqua-Yield in Sandy, Utah, where researchers incorporate nanotechnology in the production of fertilizers and agrochemicals. This nanotech approach is proving to enhance the efficiency of crop inputs for nutrition and protection, she says, while reducing the negative environmental impacts of conventional agricultural practices.
If you would like to learn more about Palmersheim’s research, some of her blog posts are linked below: