Jeffrey Riffell, Professor in the UW Department of Biology, and Joel Thornton, Professor in the UW Department of Atmospheric and Climate Science, were awarded the first Kavli-NSF grant. The grant will be used to investigate the effects of pollutants on the olfactory system of pollinators, shedding light on their ability to recognize the scents of flowers in polluted environments.

This grant comes from a collaboration between The Kavli Foundation and the U.S. National Science Foundation, with the goal of accelerating research in the emerging field of neurobiology in changing ecosystems. Research in this area has great potential to reveal novel scientific insights about how the brain adapts to change at the molecular, biophysical, cellular, and neural circuit levels.

From The Kavli Foundation website:

At the University of Washington, researchers Jeffrey Riffell and Joel Thornton will investigate how pollutants like NO3 and ozone impact pollinators’ ability to recognize the scents of flowers. The team will focus on both daytime pollinators, the honeybee (A. mellifera), and a nocturnal pollinating moth (M. sexta) to examine how floral scents, degraded by pollutants, influence information processing in the primary olfactory center, the antennal lobe, and how this in turn affects the pollinators’ ability to locate flowers in the environment. As three-fourths of the world’s flowering plants and about one-third of the world’s food crops depend on animal pollinators for producing fruits, grains, and other crops, it’s crucial to understand how different chemical pollutants influence sensory processing and behavior in various insect pollinators.

Link to UW College of the Environment press release.

Congratulations, Jeff and Joel!