Alexandra Harmon-Threatt

Director of Graduate Studies; Associate Professor, Entomology

Research Description

Pollination Ecology, Conservation, and Restoration

Harmon-Threatt is a pollination ecologist with broad interests in understanding the patterns and processes that govern plant-pollinator interactions for conservation. Pollinators play a vital role in plant reproduction, food production and ecosystem stability but are believed to be declining globally. Her work focuses on identifying and understanding patterns in natural environments to help conserve and restore pollinator diversity. With a particular focus on bees, she investigates how a number of factors at both the local and landscape scale, including plant diversity, isolation and bee characteristics, effect bee diversity in local communities.

Education

PhD, 2011, University of California, Berkeley

Additional Campus Affiliations

Associate Professor, Entomology

External Links

Lab website

Highlighted Publications

Tetlie, J., & Harmon-Threatt, A. (2024). Neonicotinoid contamination in conservation areas affects bees more sharply than beetles. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 12, Article 1347526. https://doi.org/10.3389/fevo.2024.1347526

Chase, M. H., Fraterrigo, J. M., Charles, B., & Harmon-Threatt, A. (2023). Wild bee response to forest management varies seasonally and is mediated by resource availability. Forest Ecology and Management, 548, Article 121426. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2023.121426

Chase, M. H., Charles, B., Harmon-Threatt, A., & Fraterrigo, J. M. (2023). Diverse forest management strategies support functionally and temporally distinct bee communities. Journal of Applied Ecology, 60(11), 2375-2388. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.14513

Harmon-Threatt, A. N., & Anderson, N. L. (2023). Bee movement between natural fragments is rare despite differences in species, patch, and matrix variables. Landscape Ecology, 38(10), 2519-2531. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-023-01719-6

Harmon, G. T., Harmon-Threatt, A. N., & Anderson, N. L. (2023). Changes in predator biomass may mask the negative effects of neonicotinoids on primary consumers in field settings. Insect Conservation and Diversity, 16(2), 298-305. https://doi.org/10.1111/icad.12625

View all publications on Illinois Experts

Recent Publications

Chase, M. H., Harmon-Threatt, A., Stickley, S. F., Charles, B., & Fraterrigo, J. M. (2025). Evaluating LiDAR-Derived Structural Metrics for Predicting Bee Assemblages in Managed Forests. Ecology and Evolution, 15(4), Article e71159. https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.71159

Zinnen, J., Chase, M. H., Charles, B., Harmon-Threatt, A., & Matthews, J. W. (2025). Pollinator seed mixes are phenologically dissimilar to prairie remnants. Restoration Ecology, 33(3), Article e14352. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.14352