Lexi Gauger (she/her) is a current PhD student in the Gonthier Lab and recent graduate of the University of Kentucky. She grew up on a small family farm outside Cincinnati, OH, where she learned to love the natural world and the process of growing food. She completed her undergraduate work at the University of Kentucky, where she earned a BSc in Sustainable Agriculture and a Bsc in Entomology in 2022. During her undergraduate years, she completed a USDA REEU internship studying honey bees in the Tarpy Lab at North Carolina State University, which sparked her interest in insects, and an NSF REU internship studying black soldier flies in the Aloykhin Lab at the University of Maine, which further confirmed that she wanted to study entomology. She also was a fellow at the interdisciplinary Gaines Center for the Humanities, where she completed a thesis merging ethics and sustainable agriculture. She began working as an undergraduate researcher with the Gonthier Lab in 2021.  

After earning her undergraduate degrees she continued working in the Gonthier Lab, this time as a PhD student. Her research examines the relationships between bee health and crop yield in diversified agroecosystems. She continues to think and work interdisciplinarily as a Food Systems Fellow at the University of Kentucky’s The Food Connection. Lexi’s work on this project will address best practices to achieve effective pollination and bee community health in mesotunnel systems.