About

James Crall is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Entomology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He holds a PhD in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University and a BA in Biology, Sociology, and Anthropology from Swarthmore College. His research interests focus on how organisms interact with each other and their abiotic environments, and how these interactions drive broader ecological processes and the delivery of ecosystem services in agriculture. His primary focus is on bees and plant-pollinator interactions, with an applied interest in supporting pollinators and pollination in agroecosystems. Crall's work involves studying the dynamics of complex biological systems, from collective behavior to ecological networks, and developing low-cost, scalable techniques for experimental automation, data collection, and analysis. His research addresses questions related to the effects of social traits on robustness to environmental stressors in bumblebees, interactions between environmental stressors such as pesticide exposure and temperature extremes, and how elevated atmospheric CO2 levels alter the nutritional landscape for pollinators. Additionally, he investigates how spatial and temporal variations influence plant-pollinator interactions in agroecosystems. His contributions include advancing understanding of pollinator behavior, social buffering in bees, and the impacts of environmental stressors on insect colonies.

Research topics

• Biology
• Computer Science
• Information Retrieval
• Physics
• Ecology
• Evolutionary biology
• Geography
• Neuroscience
• Botany
• Data science
• Psychology

Selected publications

• The <scp>BumbleBox</scp> : An open‐source platform for quantifying behaviour in bumblebee colonies

  Ecological Solutions and Evidence · 2025-04-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Abstract Bumblebees (Apini: Bombus ) are important pollinators globally and an emerging model system for studying the ecology and evolution of social behaviour and effects of environmental stressors on bees. Behavioural studies of bumblebees have conventionally relied on labour and time‐intensive manual observations. While recent years have seen rapid advances in automated behavioural tracking in social insects, these tracking technologies are often expensive and require extensive programming experience, limiting accessibility and widespread adoption. Here we introduce the BumbleBox, an open‐source system for the tagging, automated tracking and behavioural quantification of individual bumblebees that can be built using low‐cost consumer components, DIY fabrication (i.e. 3D‐printing and laser‐cutting) and printed ‘Augmented Reality University of Cordoba’ (ArUco) markers. We provide an integrated pipeline for data collection and analysis, including nest arena design, software for automated collection of video data and the quantification of individual behaviour. Practical implication : The BumbleBox system is designed to be (a) accessible , requiring no prior experience with programming or hardware design to operate; (b) scalable , allowing long‐term, automated tracking across many units in parallel at low cost; and (c) modular , allowing for flexible adoption to unique applications in bumblebees and other systems. We validate the use of this system in a widespread bumblebee species ( B. impatiens ) that is both commercially and ecologically important. Finally, we highlight widespread potential applications in quantifying behaviour and pollinator health in bumblebees and other social insects, including screening impacts of pesticides and other environmental stressors on social behaviour.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Ethomics for Ecotoxicology: Automated Tracking Reveals Diverse Effects of Insecticides on Bumble Bee Foraging and In-Nest Behavior

  Integrative and Comparative Biology · 2025-06-24 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author

  The majority of flowering plants depend on insect pollination for reproduction and declining pollinator populations pose a threat to biodiversity as well as critical crop pollination services globally. Widespread insecticide use negatively impacts pollinator physiology and behavior even at environmentally realistic concentrations below lethal toxicity, leading to reduced fitness and long-term population declines. However, significant gaps remain in our understanding of how insecticides affect diverse aspects of behavior and ultimately influence pollinator populations and pollination services. These gaps partly stem from the challenge of quantifying sublethal effects of pesticides on the complex behavioral repertoires of insects. Current methods often focus on a narrow set of behaviors at a time, limiting our ability to capture the comprehensive range of impacts within management-relevant timescales. The emergence of low-cost techniques for high-throughput behavioral quantification, or "ethomics," holds enormous potential to address this knowledge gap. Here, we used automated, computer vision-based tracking implemented on open-source hardware (Raspberry Pis) to investigate the sublethal effects of an emerging "bee-safe" butenolide insecticide (flupyradifurone), as well as a neonicotinoid insecticide (imidacloprid), on bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) behavior. We simultaneously quantified the behavior of uniquely tagged individual workers both within the nest, and during foraging in a semi-field environment, to assess the holistic effects of insecticides under naturalistic conditions. Both insecticides increased mortality risk and altered behavior, but in distinct ways across behavioral contexts. Imidacloprid modified nest behavior by decreasing activity, while flupyradifurone altered spatial behavior within the nest (shifting bees toward the brood). Imidacloprid-but not flupyradifurone-reduced overall foraging activity, while both affected floral preference. Overall, our results highlight the complex potential mechanistic links between sublethal insecticide exposure, behavior, and pollinator health. This work emphasizes the need-and possibility-for rapid and holistic pesticide risk assessment under realistic environmental conditions using high-throughput ethomics, and could inform the development of sustainable agricultural practices and conservation strategies.

  PublisherDOI

• Author response for "The &lt;scp&gt;BumbleBox&lt;/scp&gt;: An open‐source platform for quantifying behaviour in bumblebee colonies"

  2025-01-15

  peer-reviewSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Day versus night and the evolution of sexual dimorphism in Lepidoptera

  Research Square · 2025-11-04

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Plant-Pollinator Interactions in the Anthropocene: Why We Need a Systems Approach

  Integrative and Comparative Biology · 2025-05-29 · 3 citations

  review

  Animal-mediated pollination is one of the most ecologically and economically important mutualisms and serves as a remarkable example of cross-kingdom communication and coevolution. Unfortunately, pollinators, plants, and the interactions between them are threatened in the Anthropocene. While pollination emerges from interactions across biological scales, existing research and expertise have developed in distinct silos reflecting traditional fields of study such as ecology, plant physiology, neuroethology, etc. This forward-looking review and perspective is a culmination of the "Plant-pollinator interactions in the Anthropocene" symposium at the 2025 Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meeting, which collected expertise across these disciplinary silos to identify pressing questions our community needs to tackle in the next decade. In this perspective piece, we argue that an integrative, organismally informed systems approach is critical to unraveling the complexity of how plant-pollinator relationships are impacted by dynamic anthropogenic stressors. Specifically, this calls for an intentional and iterative integration of holistic modeling studies with empirical studies. Modeling the emergent properties driven by organismal interactions in pollination systems can identify impactful variables; this in turn should drive design of empirical studies that elucidate how organisms respond to changing environments in the context of those impactful variables, feeding back into improved models. Repetition of this process will allow better predictive power over pollination stability in changing landscapes. Finally, we consider both existing barriers to this integration, as well as emerging opportunities (such as new technologies) that can help bridge across traditional fields.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction to Plant–Pollinator Interactions in a Changing Landscape: Embracing Integrative Approaches Across Scales

  Integrative and Comparative Biology · 2025-08-13

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Elevated atmospheric CO2 has small, species-specific effects on pollen chemistry and plant growth across flowering plant species

  Scientific Reports · 2024-06-14 · 14 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide (eCO 2 ) can affect plant growth and physiology, which can, in turn, impact herbivorous insects, including by altering pollen or plant tissue nutrition. Previous research suggests that eCO 2 can reduce pollen nutrition in some species, but it is unknown whether this effect is consistent across flowering plant species. We experimentally quantified the effects of eCO 2 across multiple flowering plant species on plant growth in 9 species and pollen chemistry (%N an estimate for protein content and nutrition in 12 species; secondary chemistry in 5 species) in greenhouses. For pollen nutrition, only buckwheat significantly responded to eCO 2 , with %N increasing in eCO 2 ; CO 2 treatment did not affect pollen amino acid composition but altered secondary metabolites in buckwheat and sunflower. Plant growth under eCO 2 exhibited two trends across species: plant height was taller in 44% of species and flower number was affected for 63% of species (3 species with fewer and 2 species with more flowers). The remaining growth metrics (leaf number, above-ground biomass, flower size, and flowering initiation) showed divergent, species-specific responses, if any. Our results indicate that future eCO 2 is unlikely to uniformly change pollen chemistry or plant growth across flowering species but may have the potential to alter ecological interactions, or have particularly important effects on specialized pollinators.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The BumbleBox: An open-source platform for quantifying behavior in bumblebee colonies

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2024-11-08 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  0. Abstract Bumblebees (Apini: Bombus ) are important pollinators globally and an emerging model system for studying the ecology and evolution of social behavior and effects of environmental stressors on bees. Behavioral studies of bumblebees have conventionally relied on labor and time-intensive manual observations. While recent years have seen rapid advances in automated behavioral tracking in social insects, these tracking technologies are often expensive and require extensive programming experience, limiting accessibility and widespread adoption. Here we introduce the BumbleBox, an open-source system for automated tracking and behavioral quantification of individual bumblebees that can be built using low-cost consumer components and DIY fabrication (i.e., 3D-printing and laser-cutting). We provide an integrated pipeline for data collection and analysis, including nest arena design, software for automated collection of video data, and the quantification of individual behavior. The BumbleBox system is designed to be (a) accessible , requiring no prior experience with programming or hardware design to operate; (b) scalable , allowing long-term, automated tracking across many units in parallel at low-cost; and (c) modular , allowing for flexible adoption to unique applications in bumblebees and other systems. We validate the use of this system in a widespread bumblebee species ( Bombus impatiens ) that is both commercially and ecologically important. Finally, we highlight widespread potential applications in quantifying behavior and pollinator health in bumblebees and other social insects, including screening impacts of pesticides and other environmental stressors on social behavior.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A call for clarity: Embracing the debate on pesticide regulation to protect pollinators

  BioScience · 2024-02-20

  articleOpen access

  Author(s): Fisher, Adrian; Tadei, Rafaela; Berenbaum, May; Nieh, James; Siviter, Harry; Crall, James; Glass, Jordan R; Muth, Felicity; Liao, Ling-Hsiu; Traynor, Kirsten; DesJardins, Nicole; Nocelli, Roberta; Simon-Delso, Noa; Harrison, Jon F

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Selection on size has generated distinctive paired wing flight systems for butterfly flight and migration

  Research Square · 2023-05-31 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Stacey A. Combes

  University of California, Davis

  25 shared

• Benjamin de Bivort

  Harvard University

  21 shared

• Naomi E. Pierce

  Harvard University

  15 shared

• Tom Alisch

  10 shared

• David J. Lohman

  8 shared

• Dave Zucker

  7 shared

• Robert L Oppenheimer

  George Washington University

  7 shared

• August Easton‐Calabria

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  7 shared