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I'm Rachel Mallinger. I'm a PhD student in Entomology
working with Claudio Gratton and we are a lab
in the Department of Entomology located in the Wisconsin Energy Institute.
About five years ago I was looking for a place to do a master's degree
and I was interested in doing something related to agricultural ecology
or agro-ecology and UW–Madison has a master's
program in agro-ecology and that combined my interests
in sustainable agriculture as well as biology
and ecology in particular, so that's what really drew me to Madison.
I decided to stay on for a PhD because I liked the university
I liked the department, I was interested in working with Claudio Gratton
and so then I moved on into a PhD in entomology.
I study bees, and the bees that I study are native bees,
native to Wisconsin, and there are 600-700
species of bees in Wisconsin. I study how both
land-use change and agricultural management effect these bees.
Land-use change would include things like changing landscapes
from forest to agriculture, changing types of agriculture,
or changing areas from, say, prairie to development
and agricultural management can include things like the pesticides used or
the harvesting regime. So with biofuels and bioenergy
we're looking at how planting various
bioenergy crops like corn or switchgrass or
mixed prairie, how those changes in the landscape will effect bees
and then also how the management of those crops
whether it's corn or switchgrass or prairie, how the management of those crops
effects the bees as well.