Our pollination paper is now out, in PNAS, which is amazing. This has been a very long journey: We started the work in 2013, on a hot field, testing if our ideas could work. Olga Dyakova, who was then a fresh PhD student in the lab, was there and sweating with me and Shannon Olsson on a field behind the Max Planck Institute in Jena. In 2014 Josefin Dahlbom, and Shannon's team, optimized and validated the techniques. In 2015 Josefin with Shannon's team did the field sampling in the Himalaya's, in Uppsala and in Bangalore. In 2016 we verified our models, again in Himalaya, Uppsala and Bangalore. I got to see the beautiful Himalayas, which was such an experience. Most of 2017 has been spent trying to get the study published.
It's amazing to see that all the hard work has paid off, and to have been part of such a longitudinal, cross-continental, interdisciplinary study. Indeed, one reason that we had trouble publishing was because it was neither pure chemistry, plant biology, nor animal behavior, so it was hard to convince the editors that we had a good story. I have to say THANK YOU to Shannon Olsson. Not only is she an amazing scientist, but during this process she has taught me to persistent, and not give up. I was ready to give up, so, so many times, but she never let that happen. Thank you for being a role model to all of us. And thanks to the entire team!