Biologist seeks to unravel the genetics behind adaptive
radiation and mimicry.
As a graduate student, Heather Hines followed bumblebees all
over the world. She was part of a successful effort to track the history of
bumblebee evolution, painstakingly constructing from genetic and geographic
information a comprehensive family tree.
This was no small task. The genus Bombus encompasses some
250 species, its astonishing variety reflected in a diversity of color
patterns: the interchangeable bands of orange-red, yellow, white, brown and
black that cover bumblebee heads, thoraxes, and abdomens. From Mexico to the
Pyrenees, and from California to western Burma, Hines, now an assistant
professor of biology at Penn State, helped to document these patterns in all
their many iterations.