Dr. Alexandra Harmon-Threatt is the Bennett endowed lecturer at UMBS this summer. She is a pollination ecologist with broad interests in understanding the patterns and processes that govern plant-pollinator interactions for conservation.

As an Assistant Professor of Entomology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, she and her students focus on identifying and understanding patterns in natural environments to help conserve and restore pollinator diversity. With a particular focus on bees, she investigates how plant diversity, fire, grazing and fragmentation, affect bee diversity in local communities.