Margaret Couvillon

About

Maggie Couvillon is a faculty member at Virginia Tech's Department of Entomology, where her research focuses on pollinator biology and ecology. Her work involves studying insect-plant interactions and the broader ecological roles of pollinators. She is involved in research that aims to understand the dynamics of pollinator populations and their importance to ecosystems.

Research topics

• Ecology
• Biology
• Agronomy
• Toxicology
• Geography

Selected publications

• Do honey bee (Apis mellifera) foragers recruit their nestmates to native forbs in reconstructed prairie habitats?

  PLoS ONE · 2020 · 39 citations

  Honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies are valued for the pollination services that they provide. However, colony mortality has increased to unsustainable levels in some countries, including the United States. Landscape conversion to monocrop agriculture likely plays a role in this increased mortality by decreasing the food sources available to honey bees. Many land owners and organizations in the Upper Midwest region of the United States would like to restore/reconstruct native prairie habitats. W…

  DOI

• Honey Bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae) Decrease Foraging But Not Recruitment After Neonicotinoid Exposure

  Journal of Insect Science · 2021 · 27 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Honey bees (Linnaeus, Hymenoptera: Apidae) are widely used as commercial pollinators and commonly forage in agricultural and urban landscapes containing neonicotinoid-treated plants. Previous research has demonstrated that honey bees display adverse behavioral and cognitive effects after treatment with sublethal doses of neonicotinoids. In laboratory studies, honey bees simultaneously increase their proportional intake of neonicotinoid-treated solutions and decrease their total solution consumpt…

  DOI

• Dance-communicated distances support nectar foraging as a supply-driven system

  Biology Letters · 2022-08-01 · 18 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Much like human consumers, honeybees adjust their behaviours based on resources' supply and demand. For both, interactions occur in fluctuating conditions. Honeybees weigh the cost of flight against the benefit of nectar and pollen, which are nutritionally distinct resources that serve different purposes: bees collect nectar continuously to build large honey stores for overwintering, but they collect pollen intermittently to build modest stores for brood production periods. Therefore, nectar for…

  PublisherDOI

• If You Grow It, They Will Come: Ornamental Plants Impact the Abundance and Diversity of Pollinators and Other Flower-Visiting Insects in Gardens

  Horticulturae · 2022-11-14 · 16 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Gardening for pollinators and other flower-visiting insects, where ornamental landscaping plants are added to provide habitats and foraging resources, may provide substantial benefits to declining insect populations. However, plant recommendations often lack empirical grounding or are limited geographically. Here, we created a pollinator garden, replicated across two sites, that contained 25 ornamental landscape plants that were either native or non-native to mid-Atlantic states and perennial or…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Row crop fields provide mid‐summer forage for honey bees

  Ecology and Evolution · 2022 · 15 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Honey bees provide invaluable economic and ecological services while simultaneously facing stressors that may compromise their health. For example, agricultural landscapes, such as a row crop system, are necessary for our food production, but they may cause poor nutrition in bees from a lack of available nectar and pollen. Here, we investigated the foraging dynamics of honey bees in a row crop environment. We decoded, mapped, and analyzed 3459 waggle dances, which communicate the location of whe…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Roger Schürch

  Virginia Tech

  40 shared

• Francis L. W. Ratnieks

  University of Sussex

  39 shared

• Bradley David Ohlinger

  Virginia Tech

  17 shared

• Mary R. Silliman

  12 shared

• Taylor Steele

  11 shared

• William O. H. Hughes

  University of Sussex

  10 shared

• Anna Dornhaus

  University of Arizona

  9 shared

• Matthias Egger

  8 shared

Labs

• Margaret Couvillon LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., Animal and Plant Sciences

  University of Sheffield

  2007

• M.S., Neurobiology

  Duke University

  2004

• B.S.

  Loyola University New Orleans

  2000

Similar researchers at Virginia Tech

• Igor Sharakhovh-37
• Maria Sharakhovah-33
• Sally Entrekinh-32