Rachel McLaughlin is an undergraduate researcher in the Gardiner Lab, mentored by Frances Sivakoff. With an undergraduate grant and support from our recent USDA AFRI, Rachel and Frances are studying how soil contamination with cadmium influences the number and length of pollinator visits to sunflowers. Cadmium is found in elevated concentrations in many urban soils with an industrial past, including Cleveland, OH where much of our research takes place. This experiment was conducted on the OSU campus adjacent to a demonstration urban farm, and follows up on research recently published by Sivakoff and Gardiner (Urban Ecosystems, in press), which documented that lead contamination of soils reduced the visit duration of bees to sunflowers.
