Nick Dorian

Tufts University | Tufts · Department of Biology

Across taxa, the timing of life‐history events (phenology) is changing in response to warming temperatures. However, little is known about drivers of variation in phenological trends among species. We analysed 168 years of museum specimen and sighting data to evaluate the patterns of phenological change in 70 species of solitary bees that varied in...

In recent years, ecologists have focused on describing patterns of change in wild bee communities, but we know little about the population-level mechanisms driving those changes. We believe this emphasis on community-level patterns stems from two misconceptions: the perceptions that population-level studies are too conceptually narrow to provide ri...

1. Many terrestrial herbivores supplement their diets with minerals. Neotropical stingless bees (Apidae: Meliponini) supplement their floral diets by visiting diverse non‐floral resources such as rotting fruit and muddy water. 2. Some stingless bees also visit carrion; however, it is unknown whether bees visit carrion for minerals or for another re...

Shifts in the timing of animal migration are widespread and well-documented; however, the mechanism underlying these changes is largely unknown. In this study, we test the hypothesis that systematic changes in stopover duration—the time that individuals spend resting and refueling at a site—are driving shifts in songbird migration timing. Specifica...

For bumble bees and other social organisms, colonies are the functional unit of the population rather than the individual workers. Estimates of bumble bee nest density are thus critical for understanding population distribution and trends of this important pollinator group. Yet, surveys of bumble bee nests and other taxa with sessile life stages ra...

The first part of this publication, written by a group of participants in Bee Course 2018, results from the discovery of three nests of Caupolicana yarrowi (Cresson, 1875) at the base of the Chiricahua Mountains in southeastern Arizona. The nests are deep with branching laterals that usually connect to large vertical brood cells by an upward turn b...

For bumble bees, colonies (not individual workers) are the functional unit of the population. Estimates of colony density are thus critical for understanding population distribution and trends of this important pollinator group. Yet, surveys of bumble bee colonies and other taxa with sessile life cycle states rarely account for imperfect detection....