307 - Are Bees Losing Their Way? How Odor Pollution Disrupts Pollination | PolliNation

Dr. Jordanna Sprayberry, Associate Professor & Director of Undergraduate Biology at Stony Brook University, joins the Pollination podcast to explain how agrochemical odors interfere with bees' ability to find flowers — and why that matters for entire ecosystems. Dr. Sprayberry is a pollination neuroethologist who studies how nervous systems process sensory information and how that processing drives foraging behavior. In this conversation, she breaks down her lab's groundbreaking "odor geometry" system for measuring olfactory pollution thresholds, shares findings from wind tunnel experiments on how bees search at different distances, and makes the case for replacing lawns with native plants — even before the science is fully settled.

KEY FINDINGS DISCUSSED:

Fungicide odor alone (without ingestion) changes bee foraging behavior

Bees searching far from a flower patch weight color and odor equally; bees searching nearby rely primarily on color

Beyond 30° of odor "distance" (measured via Euclidean odor geometry), bees no longer recognize floral scents as food

Odor pollution may be most impactful for bees searching for new flower patches, not those foraging in established meadows

Bumblebee colonies that fall below a resource threshold cannot produce queens, potentially crashing local populations

Atmospheric pollutants (ozone, nitrous oxides) degrade floral odor blends as they travel, reducing perceptual range

LINKS:

Dr. Sprayberry's Lab (SPRAY Lab): https://sites.google.com/stonybrook.edu/spraylab/home

Stony Brook University Department of Biology: https://www.stonybrook.edu/biology