Luke Bowles | Bowles Bugs
Department of Plant, Insect, and Microbial Sciences
University of Missouri, Columbia, MO
Past and Current Projects
Ongoing Projects
Native Bee Diversity and Abundance in Private Pollinator Gardens
I am investigating how a pollinator conservation initiative in Missouri supports native bee diversity and abundance. Through the Wild Yards program, residents receive free consultations on how to make their yards more pollinator-friendly. Through citizen-led photo surveys, I aim to assess the effectiveness of the program, document urban bee biodiversity, and make important recommendations to improve the program. I am also conducting social science research using surveys to gather information on barriers to participation.
Emotions and Morals in Socio-Scientific Reasoning
Science education is not just about teaching students scientific facts. Rather, it must teach students how to apply scientific reasoning within important social contexts and to important issues like climate change, genetic engineering, and nuclear energy. This project aimed to uncover the role that moral and emotional reasoning play when biology students reason about controversial science issues such as genetic engineering.
Sound-Induced Nectar Production in Borago Officinalis
Recent work has shown that some plants are sensitive to the sound of bee wingbeats and will alter nectar production in response to these sounds. I have been using controlled acoustic playback studies to measure if Borage responds to these sounds and whether these responses are age-dependent or time-dependent.
Collective Tool Use in Fire Ants
As part of my undergraduate research thesis at the University of Georgia, I researched whether red imported fire ants could optimize a tool use behavior referred to as "paving," ultimately illustrating that colonies can improve of their paving behavior over time through strategic trade off between speed and efficiency. This work was done with Dr. Takao Sasaki and Dr. Horace Zeng as part of the Hunt-Ross Lab.
Personality and Colony Structure in Clonal Raider Ants
As part of a summer internship at Harvard University, I assisted with a research project investigating if clonal raider colonies will shift task allocation when the personality structure of their colonies was altered. This project is still ongoing and was conducted with Dr. Buck Trible and PhD Studnet Abi Zuber as part of the Trible Lab.
Population Modeling in Langur Monkeys
I assisted with PhD student Alexander Hofner in using RavenPro to analyze different call types of purple-faced and tufted gray langurs in Sri Lanka. These analyses were used to train a machine-learning model to update the population for these two endangered species. This research was conducted as part of the Primate Behavioral Ecology Lab under the direction of Dr. Roberta Salmi.
