UTICA, NY – Dr. Margarita Orlova, an assistant professor of biology at SUNY Polytechnic Institute, recently received a grant totaling nearly $10,000 from Pollinator Partnership, a San Francisco-based non-profit whose mission is to promote the health of pollinators, which are critical to food and ecosystems, through conservation, education, and research.

This specific grant funds a project that investigates how health stressors, such as pathogens, pesticides, and nutritional deficiency, affect the chemical profile of honeybee workers and queens. Dr. Orlova is going to test how the exposure to nutritional stress will affect cuticular hydrocarbon profiles and volatiles in experimental groups of honeybees, with the ultimate goal of developing a diagnostic tool, based on chemical signals, that will allow early detection of stress and infection. She will do this by not only studying nutritional stress, but also its interaction with viral infections and pesticide exposure.

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SUNY Poly is New York’s globally recognized, high-tech educational ecosystem. SUNY Poly offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in the emerging disciplines of nanoscience and nanoengineering, as well as cutting-edge nanobioscience programs at its Albany campus, and undergraduate and graduate degrees in technology, including engineering, cybersecurity, computer science, and the engineering technologies; professional studies, including business, communication, and nursing; and arts and sciences, including natural sciences, game design, mathematics, humanities, and social sciences at its Utica campus; thriving athletic, recreational, and cultural programs, events, and activities complement the campus experience. As the world’s most advanced, university-driven research enterprise, SUNY Poly boasts billions of dollars in high-tech investments and hundreds of corporate partners since its inception. For information visit www.sunypoly.edu