Tag: pollinators

Why are neonicotinoids so polarised?

Posted on by amanda.woodman-hardy

Bee on yellow flower

The use of neonicotinoid insecticides has been, and still is, a topic of huge controversy and dispute. To use an appropriate analogy, stakeholders appear to fall into one of two neighbouring fields, distinctly fenced off from one another.

In one field, there are those that believe that the scientific evidence revealing the impacts of neonicotinoid compounds on pollinators and the wider environment is more than sufficient to strictly ban their use as a pest management tool. In the other field, interested parties argue that the evidence is convoluted and context specific, and that in some circumstances neonicotinoid use can be a safe, and environmentally resourceful strategy.

But why has this topic become so polarised? And why is there increasingly less space for those that wish to ‘sit on the fence’? This blog summarises the research published in a recent paper by Hannah Romanowski and Lauren Blake. The paper investigates the causes of controversy, and analyses the viability of alternatives in the UK sugar beet system.

What are neonicotinoids?

Neonicotinoids (neonics) are a group of synthetic compounds used as the active ingredient in some insecticides. They are neuroactive, which means that they act on the nervous system of the insect, causing changes in behaviour. They specifically bind to receptors of the nicotinic acetylcholine (nAChRs) enzyme, which are specific to insects, meaning neonics have low toxicity to vertebrates, such as mammals. They are used to control a variety of pests, especially sap-feeding insects such as aphids. Neonics are a systemic pesticide, meaning that they are absorbed by the whole plant (either by seed coating or spraying) and distribute throughout all the plants tissue.

Are neonics legal in the UK?

That’s where things get confusing… the answer is both yes and no. In 2018, the UK prohibited the outdoor use of neonics following a review of the evidence about their risk to pollinators, published by the European Food Safety Authority. However, the UK and many other EU member states have since granted emergency authorisations, which allows the use of neonics under a set of specific circumstances and conditions. The best-known example of this in the UK is the emergency authorisations granted in 2021, 2022 and 2023 for the use of thiamethoxam, one of the banned neonicotinoid compounds, on sugar beet.

However, even if an emergency authorisation is approved by UK Government, the predicted virus incidence (forecasted by Rothamsted Insect Survey) in a given year must be above a decided threshold before authorisation is fully granted. If the threshold is not met, neonicotinoids use remains prohibited. In 2021 for example, Defra set the threshold at 9%, and since the forecast of the virus was only 8.37%, the neonicotinoid seed treatment was not used. The crop went on to grew successfully unscathed by the virus.

Why is sugar beet an exception?

The Expert Committee on Pesticides (ECP) produced a framework in 2020 that laid out a list of requirements for an emergency authorisation of a prohibited pesticide. Requirements include not having an alternative, adequate evidence of safety, limited scale and control of use, and evidence of a permanent solution in development. In essence, the long-term economic and environmental benefits of granting the temporary emergency authorisation must outweigh any potential adverse effects resulting from the authorisation.

Sugar beet farm in Switzerland
Sugar beet farm. Source: Volker Prasuhn, Wikimedia.

Sugar beet is extremely vulnerable to a yield-diminishing group of viruses known as yellows virus (YV). YV are transmitted by an aphid vector, Myzus persicae, which are effectively controlled by neonic seed treatment. Compared to other crop systems, sugar beet is also considered low risk and ‘safer’ as it does not flower before harvest and is therefore not as attractive to pollinator insects. As was found during the research of this paper, there are currently no alternatives as effective as neonics in this system, but long-term solutions are in development. Since sugar beet produces 60% of white sugar consumed in the UK, the economic and environmental impacts of yield loss (i.e. from sugar imports) would be serious. In 2021, the government felt that sugar beet sufficiently met the requirements outlined by the ECP, and emergency authorisation was granted.

What were the aims of this paper?

The main aim of this study was to identify the key issues associated with the debate surrounding the emergency authorisation of neonics on sugar beet, and evaluate and compare current policy with potential alternatives.

Most of the data for this study was collected through semi-structured interviews with nine respondents, each representing a key stakeholder in this discussion. Interviews took place in 2021, just after the announcement that neonics would not be authorised, despite granting the emergency authorisation, as the threshold was not met.

What did this research find?

The main take-home from this research was that uncertainty around the scientific evidence was not the biggest concern to respondents, as was predicted. Instead, respondents were alarmed at the level of polarisation of the narrative.  It was broadly felt that the neonicotinoid debate illustrates the wider issues around environment discussions, that are falsely perceived as a dichotomy, fuelled by media attention, and undermining of science.

The organisation of the sugar beet industry was also considered an issue. In east England, where sugar beet is grown, local growers supply only one buyer, British Sugar. This means that for British Sugar to meet demand they use a contractual system, whereby growers are contracted each year to meet a particular yield. This adds pressure to growers, and means that British Sugar controls the seed supply and therefore the treatment of seeds with synthetic pesticides. One respondent in the study said, “At one time you couldn’t order seed that wasn’t treated with neonicotinoid’.

The study also found that alternatives such as Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and Host Plant Resistance (HPR) were not yet effective in this system. There were 3 reasons why IPM fails. Firstly, sugar beet has a very low yield diminishing threshold for the virus, meaning that it does not take much infection to significantly effect yield. Secondly, the system is extremely specific, meaning that general IPM practices do not work and research on specific methods of IPM (such as natural predators of Myzus persicae) are limited. HPR is in development, and some new varieties of plant with host resistance have been produced, but the virus has multiple strains and no HPR varieties are resistant to all of them. Finally, there is no incentivisation for farmers to take up alternative practices. Due to the contract system, the risk to growers of sugar beet to try new pest management strategies is too high.

What is the latest in 2023?

In 2023, another emergency authorisation was granted, however the threshold set by Defra was increased to 63% virulence. In March, the Rothamsted Virus Yellows forecast predicted an incidence of 67.51%, and so the neonicotinoid seed treatment was used. With this authorisation there are still conditions that growers are required to meet to mitigate any risk to pollinators. This includes no flowering crops being grown for 32 months after neonic treated sugar beet has grown, using herbicides to reduce the number of flowering weeds that may attract pollinators to the field growing treated sugar beet, and compliance with stewardship schemes such as monitoring of neonicotinoid residues in the environment.

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This blog is written by Hannah Romanowski, Biological Sciences, University of Bristol. The paper that this blog is based on can be found here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13412-023-00830-z.

Hannah Romanowski

 

Migration, mobilities and the ecological context

Posted on by janet.crompton

In this special blog series, Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB) and the Cabot Institute for the Environment bring together researchers from across the University of Bristol to explore connections between movement and the environment from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Their diverse approaches highlight the importance of developing frames that incorporate both migration and environment, and in so doing benefit our understandings of both. 

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Migration can make you happy. When I see the first swifts arrive in the spring, I stop in my tracks and smile broadly at all and everyone. I have to restrain myself from telling people walking down the street that ‘they’ are back. Swifts are one of the wonders of the world – they make Concorde look clunky, they hurtle down streets in towns screaming wildly at dusk seemingly just for the fun of it, and scientists have calculated that the distance they fly over their lifetime is equivalent to flying to the moon and back seven times!

Dahlia (Bishop of Llandaff). Image credit: Jane Memmott

Migratory species like swifts have two homes and they are generally well regarded in both places. It’s a bit more touch and go whether alien species are welcome or not, and highly context dependent. For example, we deliberately introduce species from all around the world into our gardens without qualm – looking out the window onto my front garden, I’ve got honey bush and pineapple lilies from South Africa, Dahlias from Mexico, a Hebe from New Zealand, devil’s tobacco from Chile and foxgloves from seed collected down the road! In contrast, my local nature reserves are doing their best to remove Rhododendron, Cotoneaster and Himalayan balsam.

Context really is key here. Thus, gardens are grown for colour, relaxation, fruit, vegetables, and art (and I consider gardening as much of an art as a science) and they are highly managed and artificial habitats. In fact, they are increasingly considered as outdoor rooms in the media, and no one worries what countries their botanical furniture is from. In contrast, nature reserves are usually more natural settings where we want to capture natural patterns and processes, so there is an expectation that the species present should be native. And there is good evidence that while most alien species are harmless, some species (approximately 1%) can be very damaging to the environment and the economy.

Honey bush leaves (Melianthus major). Image credit: Jane Memmott

Migration is about mobility, and mobility is a key part of the scientific process. Thus, universities are ecosystems which provide intellectual homes to academics from all over the world. My own department is home to scientists from Africa, Germany, Brazil, Switzerland, Brazil, Italy and China and those are just the people I’ve bumped into over the last few days. COVID has put a bit of a spanner in the works on the mobility front, but mobility is so key to business that academics have quickly found other ways to be mobile. For example, in my own research group, we have been running a large project in a remote part of Nepal entirely by Zoom for the last two years. But, by dint of the internet and some incredible UK staff and amazing project partners in Nepal, we have trained field staff in ten remote villages in the Himalayas to collect diet data for both bees and villagers, using protocols that would have been very new to them. The data is then uploaded by the field staff to the internet and arrives on the computers the other side of the world as if by magic.

Mobility is such a large part of a scientist’s life that when it goes wrong it can feel shocking. I’ve had two encounters with mobility of scientists being blocked, one involving myself, another a visiting scientist. Mine was, I suspect, a straightforward random immigration check, but it did leave me rather shaken. I was travelling to Canada for the first time and got taken out of the queue and then grilled for 30 minutes on the nature of my visit. I was giving a plenary talk at a conference and had fortunately remembered to print out my letter of invitation. Unfortunately, I hadn’t actually read it for six months and so I probably did sound a bit suspicious. They did eventually let me in and it was an excellent trip thereafter. The second time was when a restoration ecologist from Latin America, who was visiting my research group for six months, went to Spain with his family for a weekend and upon return his whole family was issued with deportation papers. There is something deeply shocking about seeing the hostile environment process in action, especially when mobility is simply part of normal academic interchange. After some high-level work by an international lawyer this too was fixed. Restoration ecology is much more of a long-term process, but the restoration of mobility was much faster in this instance, if a lot more stressful.

Swift (Apus apus). Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Migration and mobility are everyday events in the environment. They can be natural such as the return of swifts each year, or they can be assisted such as the reintroduction programmes for species that have become extinct in the UK. One of the biggest reintroduction success stories is the red kite, a bird that you are almost guaranteed to see now if you drive down the M4 motorway or look out of the train window from Didcot to London. These are big and very beautiful predatory birds – imagine a paprika coloured swallow with a 6ft wingspan! My last few Saturdays have been spent driving from Bristol to a hospital in Hampshire to visit a sick relative and one of the things that has made this less stressful is counting the red kites along the motorway. Last Saturday was a 12-kite day, my highest count yet.

To end, migration, mobility and the environment are inextricably linked. There is both natural and human assisted movement of species in the environment. Species can be both welcome and unwelcome depending on the context. It’s complicated, but it’s the everyday bread and butter of ecologists around the world. With alien plants bringing colour and bizazz to our gardens and swifts bringing happiness as they return to their second homes in the UK, there is a lot to like about migration and mobility in the environment.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute for the Environment member, Jane Memmott, Professor of Community Ecology in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol. Her research interests include pollination ecology, invasion ecology, biological control and restoration ecology. In each case she considers how ecological networks can be used as a tool to answer environmental questions.

Professor Jane Memmott

Looking back over a decade of Urban Pollinating in Bristol

Posted on by janet.crompton
Bees on Teasel
Two bumble bees on Teasel. Credit: crabchick

As the UK prepares to host the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 (31 October – 12 November) and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity COP15 takes place online (11-15 October), I have been looking back over a decade of urban pollinating in Bristol.

One of the four COP26 goals is ‘adapt to protect communities and natural habitats’ which includes Nature Based Solutions (NBS). These are answers to global environmental challenges which are created or inspired by natural processes based on or utilising the functions of nature. For this purpose, the Urban Pollinator Project established first here in Bristol, demonstrates perfectly how natural resolutions can benefit our ecosystems on a local, national, and global scale.

Urban Pollinators 

Before 2011 an extraordinarily little amount was known about the ecology of urban pollinators in the UK. Despite pollinators maintaining a vital role in protecting our biodiversity and upholding crucial ecosystems, their role in our ever-expanding cityscapes had yet to be examined.

Only a few plants are able to self-pollinate, and as a result they are reliant on insects, birds, bees, wasps, wind, and water to keep the cogs of pollination turning. Yet, since the 1930s 97% of wildflower meadows, home to many the many species of pollinators, have been lost. As a result of this drastic loss of habitat, a recent report found that a quarter of known bee species have not been sighted  since the 1990s. Certainly, an increase in urbanisation and expansion of cities and towns into wilder areas has contributed to such a dramatic decline. And so, the question was posed – how can we make pollinating insects more resilient and adapt to our increasingly urban landscapes?

In 2011 Dr Katherine Baldock, a researcher at the University of Bristol, set out to answer these questions. Leading teams from the University of Reading, Leeds, Edinburgh, and Bristol they embarked on a four-year nationwide initiative researching insect pollinators in urban habitats in the first study of its kind – The Urban Pollinator Project.

Findings 

In Bristol, university researchers from the project examined the introduction of wildflower meadows alongside the M32 in July and August 2011. Over half of the species on Bristol’s Biodiversity Action Plan Priority Species List are in fact pollinators, and so not only was the Urban pollinators research unique, but vital to the future of our city’s ecology.

The findings from the study were able to report no significant difference between an abundance of pollinators and rare species in these urban wildflower meadows when compared with farms, wild areas, and nature reserves. They were also able to locate “hot spots” of pollinator diversity in cities and most importantly they were able to provide practical advice to the government, wildlife organisations, city councils and local individuals as to how to increase and improve pollinator biodiversity in urban habitats. (report)

In 2014, researchers from the Urban Pollinators Project went on to work alongside the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) using their findings to provide practical advice to the UK as part of the National Pollinator strategy, using Bristol as an example of where urban pollinating strategies had already been implemented.

Local impact 

Locally, the team of urban pollinators have left a big impression on the Bristol community. The research conducted by the urban pollinators has gone on to have a significant impact on local wildlife trusts, businesses, individuals, and policies, influencing and advising on many successful conservation initiatives across the city.

At the University of Bristol, students in 2012 and 2013 planted wildflower meadows across the campus, creating a 30 square metre pollinating zone which in addition to its ecological benefits, looked great too. Many other organisations followed suit and urban wildlife zones cropped up across Bristol localities making room for pollinating insects and raising awareness for their protection throughout different communities.

In 2014, the Get Bristol Buzzing initiative was formed in yet another first of its kind. In a partnership between Avon Wildlife Trust, Bee Bristol, Bristol City Council, Bristol Friends of the Earth, Buglife, South Gloucestershire Council and the University of West England they all united, dedicated and determined to protect and increase pollinating habitat across Bristol. Similarly, they committed themselves to raising awareness for the importance of insect pollinators and spread the word around local communities, organisations, and businesses. (report)

In 2015 the University of Bristol led “The Greater Bristol Pollinator strategy” which in 2017 was able to report an increase in pollinators in the Greater Bristol area.

Global impact

The decline in pollinating insects is occurring globally, and at a rapid rate. To help to protect global biodiversity the blueprint established in Bristol could certainly provide a nature-based solution in the face of future global environmental challenges.

Today the impact of pollinators is no longer just being investigated in urban environments across the UK. Current project-lead and original member of the Urban Pollinators Project Professor Jane Memmott has recently been examining the role of pollinators in protecting food chains in Nepal. Her dedication to improving ecological networks and pollinating systems has most recently led her to a pioneering discovery that pollinating animals can improve nutrients in food in developing countries.

The project today

This year, continuing their excellent work, Professor Jane Memmott and the Urban Pollinator Project discovered that urban gardens are vital for protecting pollinating insects. Published in the Journal of Ecology, this research found that city gardens account for an impressive 85% of nectar produced in Urban areas generating the most nectar per unit area of land. With 29% of land in cities made up of domestic gardens, it truly is vital that we seek to cultivate thriving urban environments to protect our pollinating ecosystems.

Thanks to these dedicated ecologists it has been a remarkable decade for the Bristol bees, hopefully the next decade will be even better.

So, what can you do to turn your garden into a pollinating haven?

(1) Plant for our pollinators:

Bees, wasps, butterflies, and other pollinating insects love nectar and pollen rich flowers and trees. Try filling your garden, allotment, porch, windowsill, or any available space with the flowers they love!

(2) Leave areas to go wild:

Save yourself from gardening and allow plants to grow freely, the wilder the area the more pollinators it will attract.

(3) Ditch pesticides:

Many pesticides can be harmful if not kill pollinating insects. Abandoning pesticides will increase the chances of making your area a pollinating zone!

(4) Mow your lawn less:

Research published in the Biological Conservation Journal found that by mowing your lawn once every two weeks instead of one increases the number of bees in that area by a huge 30%.

(5) Make a bee house:

Make a bee house of bamboo sticks to give your local bees somewhere to lay their eggs and protect themselves from harsh weather conditions.

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This blog is written by Lois Barton, Cabot Institute for the Environment Global Environmental Challenges Master’s student and temporary Comms Assistant. Lois’s research explores the role of the arts in ecological movements in Chile, specifically surrounding how visual culture increases visibility for environmental causes.

 

Interested in postgraduate study? The Cabot Institute runs a unique Master’s by Research programme that offers a blend of in-depth research on a range of Global Environmental Challenges, with interdisciplinary cohort building and training. Find out more.

“Between the Insect Hordes and Ourselves”: Imaginaries of insect declines from the 1960s onwards

Posted on by janet.crompton
A still from Bee Movie (2007), directed by Simon J. Smith and Steven Hickner

‘According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible.’ You might recognise these words as the opening from the animated film Bee Movie (2007). The film is as known for its memes as its compulsive heteronormativity. If you are unaware: not only are there many happy nuclear bee families, the star of the film, Barry, is a male worker bee. On top of that, the human woman with whom Barry takes on the honey industry and fights for equal bee rights appears to develop some warm feelings for him. Needless to say, Bee Movie is fun but not a cinematographic masterpiece.

Jokes aside, the 2007 film is a good indicator of an influx of documentaries, memoirs, novels, and poetry collections starring the Western or European honeybee. Perhaps I’m being too critical here. This influx does excite me in a way, as it shows that insect life and decline has become part of a broader conversation. But, with this awareness of insect decline in our cultural imagination comes a sting in the tale. In this case, the sting is an almost obsessive focus on the European honeybee in an age of overall insect decline and what Elizabeth Kolbert (2014) popularised as the sixth extinction. There are thousands of known species of bees all over the world—not to mention other bugs—and yet a select group of people continue to talk, write, film, draw and campaign for the European honeybee. (Are you familiar with the concept of bee-washing?)

In response to these stories, I started thinking about the following: why is there so much creative work on the honeybee? Insects make up the most biodiverse and largest class of described (and estimated) species in the animal kingdom. And while many of these—not all—are indeed facing decline or even extinction, the European honeybee is not one of them.

What started out as a general interest, quickly evolved—metamorphosed!—into my doctoral project on insect decline. Inspired by Ursula Heise’s (2016) work on the cultural side of extinction, I started asking the following: what kind of narratives do people create when talking about insect decline, and how do they tie in with other and older insect stories, our broader cultural memory? Is there an explanation to be found for this honeybee hyperfocus when it comes to narratives of insect decline? Thinking about these questions, I kept returning to Donna Haraway, who wrote that ‘it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with … It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.’ (12) Haraway’s keen (if not overcited) observation also applies to the case of insect decline. When looking at creative storytelling—of which there is a lot—we’re not just considering entertainment or aesthetics. Even with something as seemingly banal as Bee Movie, it does matter what stories we tell to tell the story of insect decline. So why do people contribute to this, for lack of a better word, honeybee extravaganza?

An assortment of contemporary honeybee stories
My project become more than a chance to get deep into the problem with honeybees and other charismatic microfauna. Thinking about tiny critters (instead of charismatic megafauna) created the opportunity to engage with and tease out some of the broader questions in the fields of critical animal and extinction studies. Between all the reading and writing and talking and plotting out of the work that needs to be done, theories and ideas and random shower thoughts keep falling into place, and I have a red thread or two running through the different chapters of my thesis. Watch this space.
For now, I do want to say that one of the more rewarding elements of my research so far has been the deep dive into care ethics. My understanding of the concept has both expanded and gained new focus, and my deep dive into care and conservation has opened my eyes to the possibility of care as a violent practice (Salazar Parreñas 2018). One of my current challenges is to see how care, understood as ‘a vital affective state, an ethical obligation and a practical labour’ (Puig de la Bellacasa), is reflected in the poetics of insect decline. What does a poetics of care look like when we let ourselves become subject to, as Haraway (2008) phrased it, the ‘unsettling obligation of curiosity, which requires knowing more at the end of the day than at the beginning’ (36). What happens when we allow ourselves to pay careful attention to the other-than-human life around us and start to care?
Assorted Coleoptera in the University of Texas Insect Collection

 

Another thread is that of the different (temporal and spatial) scales of extinction and the limits of our empathy for other-than-human animals. As Ursula Heise (2016) and Dolly Jørgensen (2019) so effectively argue in their monographs on the topic, extinctions come to matter once they reflect upon our own (human) pasts, presents, and futures and we can emotionally engage with them. And like these different pasts, presents, and futures, extinction isn’t singular. It is easy—and to a certain extent even useful—to put it all under the label of the sixth extinction. Still, I am increasingly convinced that such labels obscure the differences and intricacies people need to be aware of in the face of the sixth extinction—or rather, extinctions.
There are local extinctions, global extinctions, extinctions completely missed or forgotten (by human eyes), even desired extinctions. Communities respond to and engage with different species and local and global extinctions in different ways. Especially when something tricky like shifting baseline syndrome ensures that some communities aren’t aware of local extinctions or declines in the first place, while passionate campaigns for charismatic megafauna put certain species on the global agenda and in the public eye. I’m not saying this is always a bad thing (I’m just as passionate about the survival of the Malayan and Sumatran tiger as the next person).
I am, however, saying that it is worth researching how attention and care are directed and, ideally, can be redirected in times of need. And insects—in all their creeping and crawling diversity, with important ecosystem functions such as pollination, prey, and waste disposal—have turned out to be an excellent group to consider these questions.
Sources
  • Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke UP, 2016.
  • —. When Species Meet. U of Minneapolis P, 2008.
  • Heise, Ursula K. Imagining Extinctions: The Cultural Meanings of Endangered Species. U of Chicago P, 2016.
  • Jørgensen, Dolly. Recovering Lost Species in the Modern Age: Histories of Longing and Belonging. MIT Press, 2019.
  • Kolbert, Elizabeth. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. Bloomsbury, 2014.
  • Puig de la Bellacasa, María. Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. U of Minnesota P, 2017. Salazar Parreñas, Juno. Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation. Duke UP, 2018

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Eline D. Tabak, PhD researcher in English (University of Bristol) and Environmental Humanities (BSU). This blog outlines her SWW DTP-funded project. You can follow Eline on twitter @elinetabak and see more of her writing and work at www.elinedtabak.com. This blog was reposted with kind permission from the Centre for Environmental Humanities. View the original blog.

Eline D. Tabak

 

 

Bees and butterflies are under threat from urbanisation – here’s how city-dwellers can help

Posted on by janet.crompton
File 20190115 152977 13ovnf5.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1
All a-flutter.
Shutterstock.

Pollinators such as bees, hoverflies and butterflies, are responsible for the reproduction of many flowering plants and help to produce more than three quarters of the world’s crop species. Globally, the value of the services provided by pollinators is estimated at between US$235 billion and US$577 billion.

It’s alarming, then, that pollinators are under threat from factors including more intense farming, climate change, disease and changing land use, such as urbanisation. Yet recent studies have suggested that urban areas could actually be beneficial, at least for some pollinators, as higher numbers of bee species have been recorded in UK towns and cities, compared with neighbouring farmland.

To find out which parts of towns and cities are better for bees and other pollinators, our research team carried out fieldwork in nine different types of land in four UK cities: Bristol, Reading, Leeds and Edinburgh.

An easy win

Urban areas are a complex mosaic of different land uses and habitats. We surveyed pollinators in allotments (also known as community gardens), cemeteries and churchyards, residential gardens, public parks, other green spaces (such as playing fields), nature reserves, road verges, pavements and man-made surfaces such as car parks or industrial estates.

Perfect for pollinators.
Shutterstock.

Our results suggest that allotments are good places for bees and other pollinating insects, and that creating more allotments will benefit the pollinators in towns and cities. Allotments are beneficial for human health and well-being, and also help boost local food production.

In the UK, there are waiting lists for allotments in many areas, so local authorities and urban planners need to recognise that creating more allotment sites is a winning move, which will benefit people, pollinators and sustainable food production.

Good tips for green thumbs

We also recorded high numbers of pollinating insects in gardens. Residential gardens made up between a quarter and a third of the total area of the four cities we sampled, so they’re really a crucial habitat for bees and other pollinators in cities. That’s why urban planners and developers need to create new housing developments with gardens.

But it’s not just the quantity of gardens that matters, it’s the quality, too. And there’s a lot that residents can do to ensure their gardens provide a good environment for pollinators.

Rather than paving, decking and neatly mown lawns, gardeners need to be planting flowers, shrubs and bushes that are good for pollinators. Choose plants that have plenty of pollen and nectar that is accessible to pollinators, and aim to have flowers throughout the year to provide a constant supply of food. Our research suggests that borage and lavender are particularly attractive for pollinators.

Now that’s a happy bee.
Shutterstock.

Often plants and seeds in garden centres are labelled with pollinator logos to help gardeners choose suitable varieties – although a recent study found that that ornamental plants on sale can contain pesticides that are harmful to pollinators, so gardeners should check this with retailers before buying.
Weeds are important too; our results suggest that dandelions, buttercups and brambles are important flowers for pollinators. So create more space for pollinators by mowing less often to allow flowers to grow, and leaving weedy corners, since undisturbed areas make good nesting sites.

An urban refuge

Parks, road verges and other green spaces make up around a third of cities, however our study found that they contain far fewer pollinators than gardens. Our results suggest that increasing the numbers of flowers in these areas, potentially by mowing less often, could have a real benefit for pollinators (and save money). There are already several initiatives underway to encourage local authorities to mow less often.

Roundhay Park in Leeds: not a flower in sight.
Shutterstock.

Ensuring there are healthy populations of pollinators will benefit the native plants and ecosystems in urban areas, as well as anyone who is growing food in their garden or allotment. Towns and cities could act as important refuges for pollinators in the wider landscape, especially since agricultural areas can be limited in terms of the habitat they provide.

It’s crucial for local authorities, urban planners, gardeners and land managers to do their bit to improve the way towns and cities are managed for pollinators. National pollinator strategies already exist for several countries, and local pollinator strategies and action plans are helping to bring together the key stakeholders in cities. Wider adoption of this type of united approach will help to improve towns and cities for both the people and pollinators that live there.The Conversation

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Katherine Baldock, NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellow, University of Bristol. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Pollination and International Development: How bees can help us fight poverty and feed the world

Posted on by janet.crompton

Animal pollinators are the industrious workers in the factory of life – transporting pollen from one flower to another to ensure successful fertilisation. 75% of our crop plants benefit from this free service which can increase the yield, quality and even shelf-life of their products. This translates to a US$235-577bn value to global agriculture each year. Many of our favourite foods – strawberries, coffee and cocoa – can end up shrivelled and tasteless without pollination. This ecosystem service is under increasing threat however, as pollinators face the potent cocktail of pressures we have laid upon them, declining in numbers across various parts of the world.

But what has all this got to do with international development? From what we can tell, communities in developing countries [1] are more reliant on pollinators than almost anyone, standing to lose important income, livelihoods, nutrition and cultural traditions if pollinators decline. And yet, although a number of researchers across the developing world have made substantial and important contributions to this field, limited resources and capacity have meant that only a small proportion of pollination research has focused on these regions. In fact, there isn’t even enough data to know what is happening to pollinators in the developing world, let alone how we can best conserve them and their values to human wellbeing.

Over two billion people in developing countries are reliant on smallholder farming and therefore indirectly reliant on pollinators, without necessarily knowing it.  Many valuable cash crops, for example coffee, cocoa and cashews, are highly pollinator dependent and almost exclusively grown in the developing world, providing income for millions of people. In fact the reliance on pollinator-dependent crops has increased faster in the developing world than anywhere else. Reliance on beekeeping for income and livelihoods has also increased and is becoming a common component of sustainable development projects worldwide.

Worryingly, declines in pollination will have deeper consequences than just the loss of crop yields and income. Because many of the most nutritionally important food groups such as fruits, nuts and vegetables are also the most pollinator-dependent, pollinator declines are likely to shift the balance of people’s diets away from these foods. As a result, many millions of people around the world, particularly in developing countries, are expected to become deficient in important micronutrients such as vitamin A, vitamin C, iron and folate, resulting in millions of years of healthy life lost.

So what is being done about all this? In recognition of the importance of pollinators to human welfare and the threats facing them, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) commissioned a global assessment of Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production, published in 2016. This triggered a great wave of political and media attention and has resulted in the incorporation of the report’s key findings into the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Many governments are now in the process of developing national pollinator strategies, including the developing nations of Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, South Africa and India. On this wave of momentum, the CBD has also requested the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to update their International Pollinator Initiative (IPI) which aims to build greater understanding, management and conservation of pollinators around the world. This international attention won’t last forever though, so it is important that the current momentum is sustained and built upon as soon as possible, ensuring as many countries as possible – particularly in the developing world – are involved.

The UK has a valuable opportunity to contribute to these efforts. As a centre of excellence for pollination science, it is the second largest funder and producer of pollination research after the US. But only c.6% of the £95M we have contributed to pollination research in the last 10 years has any link or collaboration with a developing country (ÜberResearch 2018). As more of the UK’s Official Development Assistance budget is made available for research, there is a shift in emphasis towards research that directly contributes towards international development. New funding programmes are encouraging the UK research community to engage in collaborative projects with researchers in developing countries, building valuable research capacity. With the relevance of pollination and agro-ecology to addressing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, these topics may fit into this new funding landscape. However, to be effective and ethical, partners and institutions in developing countries must be involved in the design of, and stand to benefit from these collaborations. See here for a UKCDS report outlining the ways in which academics and funders can help ensure fair partnerships.

As populations in the developing world expand, along with per-capita food demands, these issues become all the more pressing. Food production will need to increase by 70% come 2050 and this cannot be achieved by simply expanding agricultural land or fertilizer input. To ensure people are well-fed, in a way that is sustainable and ethical, we will have to intensify our farming in new ways. Understanding and managing pollination may be an important part of this and is something that researchers, politicians, agriculturalists and development workers will need to engage with sooner rather than later.

[1] For simplicity, we use the term ‘developing countries’ to refer to all countries listed in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Development Assistant Committee (DAC) list of Official Development Assistance (ODA) recipients. This includes countries from a range of economic classifications, from ‘Least Developed’ to ‘Upper Middle Income’ which includes the nations of China and Brazil. Whilst we group all these nations under the broad term of ‘developing country’, we acknowledge the great heterogeneity between them in terms of wealth, development and research capacity.


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This blog has been kindly reposted from the UK CDS website.  It is written by Cabot Institute member Thomas Timberlake, a pollination ecology PhD researcher from the University of Bristol who undertook a three month project with the UKCDS looking at the relevance of pollination to international development.

Thomas Timberlake

To find out more about this project you can view the full report, or watch a recording of the UKCDS Pollination and International Development Webinar.

You can also listen to Tom speaking on Nature Xposed, a University of Bristol nature radio station, about the importance of pollinators in developing countries.

If you have any comments about this blog do tweet us @cabotinstitute @UKCDS.

‘Back in buzziness’

Posted on by janet.crompton

Awareness of the plight of bees and other insect pollinators, both across the UK and globally, has grown in recent years. One of the main contributing factors is habitat loss and the decline in flowers that provide nectar and pollen, which are vital resources for pollinators. This was highlighted by research conducted by Mathilde Baude and colleagues from the University of Bristol, which featured on the cover of the journal Nature this February (Baude et al., 2016).

Image courtesy of Nature.

Facilitated by generous support from the Alumni Foundation and a Grow For It Award grant, a group of students at the University of Bristol initiated a project to address this issue. Using recycled scaffolding planks from the Bristol Wood Recycling Project, they constructed two raised beds to be sown with a highly diverse mixture of native wildflowers.

Raised beds created at the University of Bristol behind the Biomedical Sciences building using recycled scaffolding planks and native wildflowers.

Get Bristol Buzzing assisted in selecting the seed mix, which is made up of annuals and perennials of thirty-seven species (including some rare species). When complete, the planters will create over 30 m2 of rich urban pollinator habitat.

In June 2016, student volunteers prepared one of the planters with topsoil and recycled construction material from the local area. The meadow, which occupies a previously open concrete space behind the Biomedical Sciences building, is in now in bloom and buzzing with bees.

Next year, a group of student volunteers will prepare the remaining bed, ready for the summer. There are also plans to organise other events and workshops to continue to raise awareness amongst students, while sharing information on practical ways in which individuals can contribute to creating more pollinator habitat. Student volunteers will also be responsible for the ongoing maintenance of the beds.

The diverse meadows not only create habitat for pollinators and other insects, but also provide food for seed-eating birds and shelter for small animals. As well as promoting biodiversity within the campus, the meadows are sure to contribute positively to the wellbeing of staff, students and members of the public who use this space.

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This blog is written by Harry Wells, from the Bristol Hub, a student-led group offering practical volunteering, skilled placements, project incubation and events to help you shape a better world.

In defence of wasps: why squashing them comes with a sting in the tale

Posted on by janet.crompton

 

Image credit: Trounce

They are one of the most unwelcome signs of summer. Buzzing through beer gardens, attacking innocent picnics, wasps arrive ominously with a sting in their tails. Universally disliked, they are swatted, trapped and cursed. But would a wasp-free world really be a better place?

Despite their poor public image, wasps are incredibly important for the world’s economy and ecosystems. Without them, the planet would be pest-ridden to biblical proportions, with much reduced biodiversity. They are a natural asset of a world dominated by humans, providing us with free services that contribute to our economy, society and ecology.

Wasps, as we know, turn up everywhere. More than 110,000 species have been identified, and it is estimated there are still another 100,000 waiting to be discovered. One recent study described 186 new wasp species in one small corner of Costa Rican rainforest alone. In contrast there are only around 5,400 species of mammals, and 14,000 recorded species of ant.

This huge and diverse assemblage belongs to the order Hymenoptera and is divided into two groups, the Parasitica and the Aculeata. Almost 80,000 species of wasps belong to the Parasitica group, which lay their eggs in or on their prey or plants using elongated tubular organs called ovipositors. The remaining 33,000 species are Aculeates, most of which are predators, and the ones whose ovipositors have been modified through evolution to form a sting.

Both parasitic and predatory wasps have a massive impact on the abundance of arthropods, the largest phylum in the animal kingdom, which includes spiders, mites, insects, and centipedes. They are right at the top of the invertebrate food chain. Through the regulation of both carnivorous and plant-feeding arthropod populations, wasps protect lower invertebrate species and plants. This regulation of populations is arguably their most important role, both ecologically and economically.

Although the majority of wasps lead solitary lives, it is the 1,000 or so species of social wasps which make the biggest impression on insect populations. Social wasp queens share their nests with thousands of offspring workers, who raise upwards of 10,000 sibling larvae during the colony cycle. This means a single nest provides a whopping bang for buck in terms of ecosystem services, killing vast numbers of spiders, millipedes and crop-devouring insects.

Pest control. shutterstock

Many social wasps are generalist predators too, which means they control populations of a wide range of species, but rarely wipe any single species out. This makes them an extremely useful, minimising the need for toxic pesticides, but unlikely to threaten prey biodiversity. It is not yet possible to accurately quantify their huge economic value in this regard, but their diet of agricultural pests such as caterpillars, aphids and whiteflies makes a massive contribution to global food security.

Wasps also play a crucial role in ecosystems as specialist pollinators. The relationship between figs and fig wasps is arguably the most interdependent pollination symbiosis known to man. Without one another, neither the fig nor fig wasp can complete their life-cycle – a textbook example of co-evolution which is estimated to have been ongoing for at least 60m years. Figs are keystone species in tropical regions worldwide – their fruit supports the diets of at least 1,274 mammals and birds. The extinction of fig wasps would therefore be catastrophic in tropical ecosystems.

The birds and the bees … and the wasp

Almost 100 species of orchids are solely reliant on the action of wasps for pollination. The plants mimic the appearance and chemical profile of female wasps, tricking males into attempting to mate with them, so that as the male wasps attempt to copulate with the flower they are loaded with pollen which is then transferred to the next male-seducing orchid. Without the wasp, these orchids would be extinct.

Working wasp. Shutterstock

Wasps also function as generalist pollinators, inadvertently transferring pollen between flowers they visit for nectar collection. One type even provide their larvae with pollen instead of insect prey. These “pollen-wasps” are considered to perform the same ecological roles as bees, pollinating a diverse array of plants. Unfortunately, while bees are credited with contributing at least €100 billion a year to the global economy through their acts of pollination, the works of wasps in the same sector is often ignored.

Even the wasps’ sting could have a positive impact on the human population. Medical researchers are exploring the potential use of biologically active molecules found within wasp venom for cancer therapy. A chemical found in the venom of the tropical social wasp Polybia paulista, has been shown to selectively destroy various types of cancerous cells.

Since they protect our crops, make ecosystems thrive, sustain fruit and flowers, and might help us fight disease, perhaps we should appreciate the wonderful work of wasps before we next swipe at them with a rolled up newspaper. They may be a nuisance on a sunny afternoon – but a world without wasps would be an ecological and economic disaster.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member, Seirian Sumner, a Senior Lecturer in Behavioural Biology, University of Bristol and Ryan Brock, MRes candidate, University of Bristol.  This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Bristol is buzzing, how the city is helping pollinators

Posted on by janet.crompton

There has been a substantial amount of press coverage recently on the plight of our pollinators. They are now less abundant and widespread than they were in the 1950s. A number of threats are responsible, including habitat loss, disease, extreme weather, climate change and pesticide use.

There is not one smoking gun among these threats, but rather the combination that has endangered some species in the UK. Loss of wild flower rich habitat (due to intensive agriculture, industrialisation and urbanisation) escalates the effect of disease, extreme weather, climate change and pesticide use. Without food or shelter, pollinators are more vulnerable.

Whilst visiting the University of Bristol Botanic Garden a few weeks ago, I noticed the abundance of pollinators busily visiting many different flowers from the orchid look-a-like flower of Impatiens tinctoria to the swathes of Rudbeckia sp. and Verbena bonariensis. This year saw the 6th year of the University of Bristol Botanic Gardens hosting the Bee and Pollination Festival in September. The Community Ecology Group from Bristol’s School of Biological Sciences was exhibiting and promoting their research as well as the exciting Get Bristol Buzzing Initiative.

To find out more about pollinator research at the University, I met up with Dr Katherine Baldock, a NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellow from the School of Biological Sciences and the Cabot Institute, to discuss the group’s work.

“Most people know that pollinators are important, but quite often don’t know what to do to help them, “ explained Katherine. “And this is where our research at the University comes into play”.

The aim of Katherine’s fellowship is to improve the value of the UK’s urban areas for pollinators by working with various stakeholders, such as city councils, conservation practitioners and the landscape industry.

Translating science into solutions

Up until 2014, Katherine worked on the Urban Pollinators Project, which is researching insect pollinators and the plants they forage on in urban habitats.

Kath Baldock

Building upon research from this project and her current Fellowship, Katherine and her Bristol colleagues have contributed to the development of  a Greater Bristol Pollinator Strategy (2015-2020). The University research group has teamed up with Bristol City Council, the Avon Wildlife Trust, Bristol Friends of the Earth, Buglife, South Gloucestershire Council and the University of the West of England to implement this with the aim of protecting existing habitat and increasing pollinator habitat in the Greater Bristol area.

The group is also raising awareness of the importance of pollinators to a wide-ranging audience within the city and further afield. This is the first local pollinator strategy within the UK and follows closely in the wake of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ National Pollinator Strategy launched in 2014. It will help to promote aspects of the national strategy relevant to urban areas and hopefully set a precedent for the development of other local pollinator strategies throughout the UK.

The local pollinator strategy outlines actions that will help fulfill the strategy aims, including:

  • formation of a Local Pollinator Forum intended to share knowledge and best practice,
  • establishment of a joined-up approach to pollinator conservation by linking projects through the ‘Get Bristol Buzzing’ Initiative,
  • working with the public in local areas to explain actions they can take as individuals.

“Urban green spaces are important corridors for wildlife and help to provide linkages across the country”, explained Katherine. I envisaged a series of insect aerial motorways linking the whole of the UK, invisible threads connecting countryside, urban fringe and city centres.

The bee link-up

The Get Bristol Buzzing Initiative is doing just that, as one of its strategic aims with the local pollinator strategy for 2016-2020, is to “Map pollinator habitat and identify target sites that allow habitat networks and stepping stones to be created to enable pollinators to move through urban areas”.

Katherine talked about how engaging the public at ground level was really important to Get Bristol Buzzing. The initiative is the pollinator component of My Wild City, a project whose vision is for people in Bristol to help transform spaces into a city-wide nature reserve. A number of interactive maps have been created that allow people to add what they have been doing in their area to help wildlife. The Get Buzzing Initiative will feed into these maps. Kath said,

‘The fact that you can add yourselves onto a map makes the Get Buzzing Initiative really visually appealing to people and much more personal.”

So, what can you do at home to help urban pollinators?

  • Plant for pollinators. Think about what plants you have in your garden. Could you change the planting or improve on it to make it more attractive to pollinators? Think about growing species that have nectar and pollen rich flowers and let your lawn grow longer to allow plants to flower.
  • Avoid pesticides. Most gardeners like their plants to remain pest free but avoid the temptation to use pesticides and accept the fact that you will lose some plants to pests. Instead try to encourage wildlife that will devour those pests or cultivate plants that will deter pests.
  • Provide habitat. As pollinators need a home, you can always make your own nest boxes if you want to give your pollinating visitors a helping hand by drilling holes in a log or by bundling up lengths of hollow sticks such as bamboo. Visit the Botanic Garden’s bee hotel for inspiration!

‘Setting aside a wild bit of garden can help pollinators by providing food, but provides nesting sites too’, remarked Katherine.

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This blog was written by Helen Roberts.  It has been republished with kind permission from the University of Bristol’s Botanic Gardens blog.

Additional information

University of Bristol’s green heroes: Katherine Baldock

Posted on by janet.crompton

In the run up to the Bristol Post’s Green Capital Awards, we thought we’d highlight some of our key Green Heroes and Green Leaders at the University of Bristol.  As part of a four part blog series this week, we will be highlighting some of the key figures behind the scenes and in front of the limelight who are the green movers and shakers of our university.  There are many more Green Heroes across the University that we would like to celebrate. To find out more about who they are and what they are doing, please visit our Sustainability Stories website.
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Katherine Baldock

Katherine is a NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellow in the School of Biological Sciences and at the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol.

Katherine has come from a background in Biology, studying in Bristol as an undergraduate. Her subsequent passion for biology and ecology has drawn her to study at various institutions and work all over the world in places such as Costa Rica and Kenya.

Her academic work is focussed on the networks of interactions between plants and their pollinators, particularly in urban environments. Her research objectives aim to improve the value of UK urban areas for insect pollinators; research which hopes to positively impact insects that are essential for maintaining a functioning ecosystem and subsequently our food supplies. Her current role requires her to liaise with policymakers, practitioners and conservation charities to ensure an effective link between research and policy. Her work is essential to Bristol as well as cities across the UK and has resulted in government action, as she elaborates: “The government have published a National Pollinator Strategy and a partnership of organisations has created a local Greater Bristol Pollinator Strategy so that we can promote action for pollinators across the whole city”.

Her work is more than just a job, Katherine is passionate about the research she does and the effects it has on our cities as she explains: “If everyone plays a part and creates a little bit of habitat for bees and other pollinating insects in their own gardens, allotments or window boxes we could really make a difference. I’m passionate about preserving nature, not just for nature’s sake but also because it is incredibly important for our health and wellbeing and provides us with so many essential services – from crop pollination to carbon sequestration to water purification.”

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Keri McNamara, a PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol.

If you would like to nominate your Green Hero or Green Leader in the upcoming Bristol Post Green Capital Awards, please visit the official Green Capital Awards website.  Entries close on 18 September 2015.

To learn more about the University of Bristol’s activities during the Bristol 2015 European Green Capital year, please visit bristol.ac.uk/green-capital.
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