About

Emilie Snell Rood is an Associate Professor in the Department of Entomology at the University of Minnesota, specializing in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior. Her role involves research and teaching within the field of entomology, contributing to the academic community through her expertise in insect ecology and evolutionary processes. She is based at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus, located in Hodson Hall, St. Paul, MN.

Research topics

• Biology
• Ecology
• Psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Environmental science
• Botany
• Evolutionary biology
• Chemistry
• Geography
• Developmental psychology
• Agronomy
• Cognitive science
• Genetics
• Art

Selected publications

• The value of basic research<i>:</i> tracing how the wonder of a blue butterfly inspired modern innovation

  Journal of Experimental Biology · 2025-06-15

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Many studies have demonstrated the benefits of basic research and yet attacks on basic research remain a current threat to science. In this Perspective, I use the Morpho butterfly as the subject of a historical narrative that starts with present day applications, then traces the roots of current innovation back to a foundation of basic research. Throughout, I ask what drew researchers to this fascinating insect; the answer generally involves the concepts of curiosity or wonder. This case study adds to many examples showing that applications, which themselves often take decades of development, often stem from centuries of observation and experimentation that are completely divorced from any applied research. But it also highlights the critical value of government and institutional support for basic research; without public funding, scientific inquiry would be guided by private interests, and curiosity-driven efforts would be limited to self-funded efforts by the wealthy. When we do support basic inquiry, we must also consider how to foster curiosity around those organisms that might be less flashy or charismatic, as we have much to learn from the ten million species on Earth.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Biology for biomimetics: II. A tutorial on how to diversify a list of biological models

  Bioinspiration & Biomimetics · 2025-09-23 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Biomimetics is a powerful tool for problem solving in design and engineering. However, most biomimetic research is limited in the range of biological models considered, for instance with a frequent bias towards vertebrate animals. Diversifying the list of possible models increases the likelihood of discovering innovative solutions to a given problem and can overcome the limitations of sometimes imperfect design in biology. In this tutorial, we review key biology concepts that can assist students and practitioners of biomimetics in diversifying their list of biological models by expanding across evolutionary time and ecological space. First, we draw on evolutionary biology, particularly independent origins of a trait or function, which increases the chance of finding unique mechanisms underlying a function of interest. Second, we discuss core concepts from ecology for sampling across geographical space, considering different biomes or ecoregions where evolution may have played out in different ways to solve similar ecological issues. We show how to distill a biomimetic problem into abiotic and biotic components that have analogies in habitats and biomes across the globe. Finally, we consider both ecological and evolutionary processes jointly. Throughout this tutorial, we review useful and accessible tools, especially online databases, for putting these approaches into practice, even for a non-biologist. We hope to make the biomimetic approach more accessible and impactful by reviewing tools for sampling a broader range of potential biological models for a given biomimetic problem.

  PublisherDOI

• Honeybees collecting latex from breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis) in Puerto Rico reveal a novel interaction with broad eco-evolutionary implications

  2025-11-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  We document honeybees collecting latex from breadfruit in Puerto Rico, a rare interaction that reveals how plant chemical diversity can shape bee foraging, plant-insect dynamics, and evolutionary trajectories---highlighting the role of nonnative species in driving eco-evolutionary change in tropical ecosystems.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Lead (Pb) concentrations across 22 species of butterflies correlate with soil and air lead and decreased wing size in an urban field study

  The Science of The Total Environment · 2025-03-01 · 7 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Pollution is a global issue contributing to biodiversity loss, climate change, and human health concerns. Lead (Pb) has long been recognized as a toxic heavy metal pollutant but few studies have investigated the impact and routes of exposure to lead in field conditions and across multiple species. We collected 22 common species of butterflies across a gradient of lead pollution in the Twin Cities metropolitan area (Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN, USA). We measured their thorax lead concentrations and their body condition including wing area, number of eggs, and brain mass. We quantified lead in the soil, host plant leaves, and air (through lichen bio-monitors) at sites where the butterflies were collected to investigate potential routes of exposure. We found a negative correlation between sublethal lead concentrations and butterfly wing size across all species. Contrary to expectations from previous literature, we did not find correlations between butterfly lead concentration and number of eggs or brain mass. Our data indicate that routes of lead exposure for butterflies are particularly pronounced through soil and air, relative to exposure through their host plants, as there were positive correlations between butterfly lead and lead in nearby soil and air, but not that of host plants. Such sublethal effects of lead, even at low levels of pollution, underline the importance of continuing to reduce emissions and impacts of pollutants to protect biodiversity.

  PublisherDOI

• Predicting lead hotspots in urban stormwater ponds across the Twin Cities Metro

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-11-19

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Stormwater ponds play an important role in urban food webs. Critically these same ponds could also serve as pollution hotspots since stormwater ponds can act as local concentrators of urban runoff. One such contaminant of concern is lead, which remains a significant issue for human and ecosystem health in the United States despite regulatory bans on its use in paint and gasoline imposed in the 1970s. Despite high levels of lead in some urban stormwater, little is known about the distribution of lead in urban aquatic ecosystems. Therefore, we characterized lead within the sediment, water column, and surrounding soil of stormwater ponds across the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Metro Area. We hypothesized that lead would be highest in ponds that receive runoff from landscapes with older construction (i.e., legacy leaded paint and gasoline), have high traffic volume (i.e., legacy leaded gasoline), and areas with low impervious surface cover (i.e., increased mobilization of contaminated soil). Moreover, we hypothesized that stormwater ponds capture lead within sediments, with more dissolved lead at the bottom of the water column, where it would interact with lead containing sediments. Across ponds, we found that age of parcel development where the pond was located was the strongest predictor of surface sediment lead content. Within pond sediments, we found that lead concentrations increased with depth below the sediment surface, which is unsurprising since depth is likely correlated with time. The strongest predictor of surface water lead concentration was the strength of pond stratification, while the strongest predictor of bottom water lead concentration was pond duckweed cover and water conductivity. Water column oxygen concentrations varied across ponds yet were not important in determining dissolved lead within the water column. Importantly, lead within pond water remained quite low despite elevated sediment lead levels. These findings confirm that stormwater ponds can act as one source of environmental lead remediation by capturing lead within sediments under a wide range of environmental conditions. Our results suggest relatively low lead release from ponds to downstream areas, indicating that ponds generally serve as sinks, not sources within the urban lead cycle.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Geographic Range Size Predicts Butterfly Species' Tolerance to Heavy Metals More Than Evolutionary History With Toxic Larval Diets

  Evolutionary Applications · 2025-05-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Some organisms appear to thrive in contaminated environments, while others are more sensitive, though the causes of this variation are unclear. The toxin coevolution hypothesis posits that an evolutionary history with natural toxins preadapts species to deal with novel toxins, while the range-size-tolerance hypothesis posits that a larger geographic range selects for broader tolerance to stressors. Butterflies are a prime system to investigate these hypotheses because they are diverse, feed on a range of larval host plants that vary in defensive compounds, and many are found in polluted environments. We ask how these hypotheses explain varying tolerance to heavy metal pollution, measured here as loads of four heavy metals along an urban gradient of metal exposure. We compared 26 butterfly species that vary in their evolutionary history with mutagenic plant defensive chemicals as well as their geographic range size. We built a dataset of plant mutagenicity synthesizing 40 years of standardized mutagenicity screening in plants, including 502 plant species of 103 families within 37 orders. We used this dataset, coupled with butterfly host records, to estimate evolutionary history with mutagens. We found that butterfly species with larger ranges tolerated significantly greater concentrations of lead, arsenic, and cadmium in their tissues. Additionally, species with a history of feeding on relatively more mutagenic host plant families tolerated greater maximum lead concentrations in their thoracic tissue. This research provides additional support for the growing observation that small-ranged species are more vulnerable to environmental change, in this case, metal pollution. In addition, an evolutionary history with mutagenic host plants may provide some additional resilience, although less than geographic range size. In addition, our dataset on comparative plant mutagenicity will facilitate future research on plant-herbivore coevolution, in fields such as chemical, community, and urban ecology.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Honeybees Collecting Latex From Breadfruit ( <i>Artocarpus altilis</i> ) in Puerto Rico Reveal a Novel Interaction With Broad Eco‐Evolutionary Implications

  Ecology and Evolution · 2025-12-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  We document honeybees collecting latex from breadfruit in Puerto Rico, a rare interaction that reveals how plant chemical diversity can shape bee foraging behavior, plant-insect dynamics, and evolutionary trajectories highlighting the role of nonnative species in driving eco-evolutionary change in tropical ecosystems.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Pronounced declines in heavy metal burdens of Minnesotan mammals over the last century

  Environmental Science and Pollution Research · 2024-08-16 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Humans have drastically altered the ecology of heavy metals, which can have negative effects on animal development and neural functioning. Many species have shown the ability to adapt to anthropogenic increases in metal pollution, but such evolutionary responses will depend on the extent of metal variation over space and time. For terrestrial vertebrates, it is unclear how metal exposure has changed over time: some studies suggest metal content peaked with the enactment of policies controlling lead emissions, while other studies suggest metal levels peaked at least a century earlier. We used 162 specimens of four mammal species (a mouse, shrew, bat, and squirrel) to ask how metal content of the fur and skin has changed over a 90-year time period, and impacts on individual performance (body size and cranial capacity). Using ICP-MS, we show that for lead, cadmium, copper, and chromium, there were significant declines in metal content in mammal tissue over the 90-year time period, with lead levels five times lower now than in the early 1900s. Importantly, metal content began to drop well before the pollution regulation of the 1970s. Effects of time greatly outweighed any effects of an individual living near a human population center. Surprisingly, there were no effects of body metal content on body size, and only manganese was negatively related to relative cranial capacity. Taken together, these results suggest that present day populations of mammals are experiencing levels of heavy metal exposure that are less stressful than they were 100 years ago. In addition, temporal decreases in metal loads likely partly reflect global patterns of pollution decline that affect atmospheric metal deposition rather than local point sources of exposure.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Host plants and landscape predict use of roadside habitat by breeding monarchs

  Insect Conservation and Diversity · 2024-06-27 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Vegetation along roadside edges, while posing some risks, can also provide breeding habitat for monarch butterflies. We investigated how landscape and site‐specific factors affect the quality of roadsides as monarch breeding habitat. We surveyed more than 250 sites along roadsides throughout Minnesota for milkweeds, floral resources and monarch eggs and larvae. We found that milkweed distribution was affected by adjacent land use and geography, with milkweeds more likely to be present in roadsides adjacent to crop and grassland and the south and west of the state. The presence and density of monarch eggs and larvae were primarily driven by milkweed density, with the likelihood of monarch presence at each site increasing with milkweed density. The density of monarchs per plant increased in sites with lower densities of milkweed, suggesting that monarch eggs are concentrated more densely on fewer plants where milkweed is scarce and spread more thinly across plants where milkweed is common. Monarch density per milkweed increased as sites were farther from core grasslands, to the south, and on narrower roadsides, also suggesting use may be higher in areas with a scarcity of habitat. The density of monarch eggs and larvae was higher in mowed than unmowed milkweed. Our study suggests that roadside habitats effectively provide breeding locations for monarchs, regardless of adjacent land use type and even when distant to high‐quality natural areas. Our findings assist conservation practitioners in planning and managing roadside habitats for monarchs and other pollinators.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Seeding roadsides is necessary but not sufficient for restoring native floral communities

  Ecological Solutions and Evidence · 2024-07-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract The plant community in roadside right‐of‐ways is an important component of transportation infrastructure. Revegetation after construction is an opportunity to improve the plant community and create pollinator habitat. However, native seed mixes are substantially more expensive than those used in conventional roadside plantings, and transportation agencies often lack resources for management. Here, we compare the actively flowering plant community across a growing season in roadside plots seeded with native seed mixes versus non‐native seed mixes in Minnesota, USA. Plots varied in age from 2 to 20 years old. We demonstrate that native seeded plots had more native flowering forbs than non‐native seeded plots, as native flowers were rare in the non‐native seeded plots. However, despite some native species establishing well, many species in native seed mixes had poor or non‐existent establishment. Furthermore, the native and non‐native seeded plots converged in the makeup of their floral communities after a few years; part of this pattern is due to colonisation of species that were never seeded at either type of plot. Practical implication . If the goal of revegetation is to produce diverse, native dominated floral communities in roadsides, agencies must invest more in long‐term management. Managers could also alter seed mixes to remove species that fail to establish, which would reduce the cost of the seed mix, but not the diversity of the plant community that ultimately establishes. The use of such streamlined seed mixes across more land area would increase the availability of pollinator habitat without substantially altering current budgets or management plans.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Megan E. Kobiela

  University of Minnesota

  21 shared

• Armin P. Moczek

  Indiana University Bloomington

  15 shared

• Alexander M. Shephard

  Indiana University Bloomington

  14 shared

• Amod Zambre

  University of Minnesota

  14 shared

• Timothy S. Mitchell

  University of Minnesota

  10 shared

• Meredith Steck

  University of Minnesota

  9 shared

• Karen S. Oberhauser

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  9 shared

• Anne Espeset

  University of Nevada, Reno

  9 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Entomology

  University of California, Berkeley

  1994

• M.S., Entomology

  University of California, Berkeley

  1991

• B.S., Entomology

  University of California, Davis

  1988