Rate My Professor Lynn Adler

Lynn Adler is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received her B.S. from Brown University in 1993 and her Ph.D. in population biology from the University of California, Davis in 2000, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Arizona from 2000 to 2001. Adler began her faculty career at Virginia Tech in 2001 before joining UMass Amherst in 2004, where she has advanced to Distinguished Professor. Her research integrates ecology and evolution to examine multi-species interactions influencing species distribution, abundance, and phenotypic trait evolution across individual to community scales in wild, agricultural, and urban settings.

Adler's main academic focus is the ecology and evolution of insect-plant interactions, encompassing plant-animal mutualisms and antagonisms in floral, foliar, and belowground tissues. Current studies investigate how floral traits, such as nectar and pollen chemistry, mediate pollinator health and pathogen transmission, particularly in bumble bees. Key discoveries include sunflower pollen's protective role against the gut pathogen Crithidia bombi, where spiny pollen reduces infections and field plantings boost queen production. She serves as lead principal investigator on a $2.4 million NSF grant probing molecular and landscape effects on bee populations and as co-PI on a USDA grant exploring plant-pollinator-pathogen dynamics. Prominent publications feature 'The ecological significance of toxic nectar' (Oikos, 2000), 'Secondary metabolites in floral nectar reduce parasite infections in bumblebees' (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2015), 'Crop pests and predators exhibit inconsistent responses to surrounding landscape composition' (PNAS, 2018), 'Sunflower spines and beyond: mechanisms and breadth of pollen that reduce gut pathogen infection' (Functional Ecology, 2023), and 'Sunflower plantings reduce a common gut pathogen and increase queen production' (Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2023). Awards include the Mahoney Life Sciences Prize (2023), Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship (2023), and College of Natural Sciences Outstanding Research Award (2021). She has mentored hundreds of undergraduates, over 20 graduate students, and more than a dozen postdocs.