Jeff Ollerton said it best, "It is easy to underestimate, and impossible to exaggerate, the importance of pollinators and the pollination service they provide to plants".

Pollinators are essential to ecosystems, playing a vital role in the reproduction of both native and cultivated plant communities and supporting entire food webs. Their activity contributes to the health and resilience of flowering plant populations, which in turn can enhance carbon sequestration, soil stability, and water purification. Tracking pollinator population dynamics over time is crucial to better understand their ecological roles and to inform effective conservation strategies. Recognizing that Louisiana State University has lacked a formal pollinator ecologist, the establishment of the Christman lab fills this critical gap and brings new capacity to advance pollinator research, monitoring, and conservation across Louisiana. The Christman lab has the capacity to identify a wide range of pollinators and house museum-quality specimens, supporting both current and future biodiversity research.

Pollinators are experiencing significant shifts in range and abundance on a global scale. These changes are driven by multiple environmental stressors, including habitat loss and fragmentation, climate change, pathogens, parasites, pesticide exposure, and non-native species introductions. These stressors often interact in complex ways, amplifying their impacts and underscoring the importance of investigating how they affect pollinators at both the species and population levels. We use an interdisciplinary approach that combines field work, geospatial analysis, statistics, machine learning, and population genetics to better understand and predict the consequences of these stressors.  

The Christman lab is dedicated to advancing the conservation and recovery of threatened and endangered pollinators, with a focus on bumble bees. Current research centers on two at-risk species: the endangered rusty patch bumble bee (Bombus affinis) and the imperiled yellow-banded bumble (Bombus terricola). To support their recovery, we collaborate with the USDA-ARS Pollinating Insect Research Unit, the Strange lab at The Ohio State University, and the Gratton lab at University of Wisconsin-Madison on projects funded by UDSA-NIFA-AFRI, USDA-FPAC, and USFWS. Our research integrates field surveys, population genetics, and ecological modeling to better understand the distribution, habitat requirements, and vulnerabilities of these species, generating actionable data to inform conservation strategies and habitat management practices. In the future, the Christman lab will continue this research, while expanding efforts to include the American bumble bee (Bombus pensylvanicus). 

Rearing bumble bees supports research, crop pollination, and conservation efforts. By rearing, mating, and wintering bumble bees under controlled conditions, we can investigate their biology, behavior, and health, while also producing colonies for field experiments, greenhouse crop production, and public outreach. The Christman lab's rearing program aims to contribute to population recovery through captive breeding, ex situ colony reintroduction, and the development of protocols for at-risk species. Bumble bee health and welfare are central to our practices, reflecting our commitment to advancing pollinator science, protecting pollinator biodiversity, and promoting sustainable ecosystems.