Advancing Integrative Pollinator Biology Education With Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences

The next generation of pollination researchers faces unprecedented environmental change during the Anthropocene and must develop cross-disciplinary research skill sets. Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) pedagogy is one instructional approach that can expose students to integrative biology research while introducing them to technologies that will become increasingly important in pollination system studies. CUREs offer additional advantages, including the potential of crowdsourcing research and strategies that can increase retention of underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). In this perspective, we present CUREs that utilize pollinator research as exemplars of how undergraduates can gain experience with integrative research approaches while providing valuable data on the effects of human activity on pollination systems. At the University of Detroit Mercy, a metabarcoding CURE was developed that utilized nanopore sequencing technology to evaluate pollen profiles in urban apiaries. Another CURE involving the solitary leafcutter bee, Megachile rotundata, is being used to evaluate pollinator habitat restoration efforts in an urban park. The instructional approach involved students integrating classical field biology research techniques with DNA barcoding to determine the success of the restoration efforts. Another example is Bee the CURE, a curriculum at Pima Community College, where students conduct barcoding experiments by uploading bee DNA sequences to a barcoding database. This CURE uses a place-based pedagogy, which has been shown to have a positive impact on Hispanic students' perceptions of STEM. These examples demonstrate that pollinator-centered CUREs can integrate multiple approaches and technologies, contribute to scientific knowledge, and can be successfully implemented in diverse institutions. To expand its impact, the pollinator research community should collaborate to develop scalable programs that train future integrative biologists in emerging technologies, such as high-throughput DNA sequencing, DNA barcoding, and advanced computational methods.