People

Current Lab Members

Principal Investigator

Quinn S. McFrederick

Quinn started as a conservation biologist, then added molecular ecology and evolution to his toolkit. He is passionate about bee conservation and also loves basic science centered around microbes that associate with bees. His current favorite bees are tropical stingless bees that eat carrion (both omnivores & obligate necrophages).

Postdoctoral Researcher

Fernando Fleites-Ayil

Fernando earned his PhD degree in Biology from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. He is interested in host-parasite interactions, particularly spillover events involving tropical insects including stingless bees, ecology of social and solitary insects (with an emphasis on bees), behavior of social insects, and pollination services provided by eusocial and solitary bees in the tropics.

Graduate Students

Jorge Mora

Jorge is originally from Costa Rica and earned his Bachelor’s degree in Geography with an emphasis in Urban Management from the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica. During his undergraduate studies, he developed a strong interest in biogeography, which led him to work in ecology, monitoring biological corridors and studying stingless bees as bioindicators of functional connectivity. He then moved to Panama to work as a lab and field technician at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, where he focused on plant–microbe interactions. He is now a PhD student in Entomology at the University of California, Riverside, where his research centers on how environmental variation and diet shape the assembly and function of microbial communities associated with bees and their floral resources. He is especially interested in how extreme dietary strategies, such as necrophagy in stingless bees, influence host–microbe interactions and what this reveals about microbiome plasticity in changing landscapes. In his free time, he enjoys running, practicing Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and cycling.

Pura Vida!

Helen Vo

Helen received a B.S. in Biology from UCR and is now continuing at UCR as an Entomology PhD student. Her research focuses on using bioinformatics to understand how environmental pollutants caused by human activity or natural disasters shape the bee gut microbiome, and how this relationship impacts plant-pollinator interactions and conservation efforts. She is also interested in incorporating more science communication strategies into her work. When not doing science, she enjoys sketching and fiddling with her fish tank.

Tallisker "Talli" Weiss