Category Archives: Bees

Plantlife’s road verge advice could negatively affect pollinators

Did anyone else hear the item on Radio 4 this morning about Plantlife’s road verge campaign and associated petition? I listened carefully to the discussion and am broadly supportive of what they are trying to achieve. But I was immediately struck by a comment that local councils should cut the verges “from mid July onwards” because most plants will have set seed by then. I’ve seen this advice given before and whilst it might be an appropriate option for plants, it could severely impact local pollinator populations.

The printed advice that Plantlife is offering (which can be found here) states that if it’s only possible to cut a verge once a year:

“Cut the full width of the verge….between mid July and September. This allows plants to flower and, importantly, gives time for seed to be set.”

This misses a vital point: between mid-July and September there is still an abundance of flower-visiting insects that require these flowers to provide resources for their nesting and egg laying activities, or to build up reserves of energy to allow them to hibernate, particularly newly-mated queen bumblebees.

Where’s the evidence to support my assertion? It’s been demonstrated by a number of studies, but I’ll point you in the direction of a paper that came out of the PhD work of one of my former students, Dr Sam Tarrant, who now works with RSPB. If you look at Figure 4 of this paper, you’ll see that on restored landfill sites the abundance of pollinators in autumn surveys (conducted September-October) was just as high as for summer surveys. On nature reserves, which are routinely cut from mid-July onwards (see Figure 2), this was not the case.

Climate change means that flower-visiting insects are now active in the UK for a much longer period of time than was previously the case, up to at least November in the south of the country. I agree with Plantlife that road verges are important habitats for plants and other wildlife. But advice that suggests cutting floral resources at a key time of the year for these insects is simply misguided. A cut between October and December would be much more appropriate.

I don’t use Twitter so if anyone could point this at Plantlife’s account I’d be interested to see what their reaction is.

How good is the evidence base for pollinator declines? A comment on the recent Ghazoul and Goulson Science correspondence

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In a recent issue of the journal Science, Dave Goulson and colleagues presented a review entitled “Bee declines driven by combined stress from parasites, pesticides, and lack of flowers”. This stimulated Jaboury Ghazoul to submit a letter to Science criticising the Goulson et al. paper from a number of perspectives, but particularly the paucity of the evidence base for pollinator declines. Dave and his co-authors robustly responded to that letter, as you might imagine. In some respects this was an unsatisfactory exchange, however, as the focus was largely on agricultural pollinators, rather than pollinators of all plants (including the majority non-cultivated species) and I think that (perhaps with more space?) Dave could have outlined the evidence in more depth.

The most striking statement in Jaboury’s letter was that the “evidence for pollinator declines is almost entirely confined to honeybees and bumblebees in Europe and North America”.

Now, even given the fact that Jaboury was possibly referring specifically to agricultural pollinators, that is a very extreme statement to make. Underlying it is the suggestion that global concerns about declining pollinator biodiversity (a subject I’ve discussed repeatedly on this blog) is underpinned by a taxonomically and geographically thin evidence base. Is that really true? I don’t believe so and I think it’s worth presenting a brief overview of the evidence, not least because Dave’s review and the resulting correspondence is pay-walled at the Science site (though if you Google the titles you might, just might, find copies posted on the web…)

Let me state from the outset that I have considerable respect for both Jaboury and Dave, as individuals and as scientists. I’ve known Dave since we were postgrads together in the early 1990s, and have had occasional contact with Jaboury through conferences and via email. So this isn’t meant to be a criticism of either of them. But I do believe that the evidence for pollinator declines is considerably more robust than Jaboury acknowledges, and even more wide ranging than Dave and colleagues describe in their response (though in fairness, most of the bee evidence was cited in their original review).

Here’s a summary of where I see the evidence base at the moment; it’s not meant to be a full review, by any means, but rather to give a flavour of the taxonomic and geographical breadth and depth of the evidence as it currently stands:

Wild bees (including bumblebees, and solitary and primitively eusocial bees) – significant reduction of abundance and diversity at local, regional and country-levels documented in Britain (Biesmeijer et al. 2006, Ollerton et al. 2014), Holland (Biesmeijer et al. 2006), Europe as a whole (Kosier et al. 2007, the recent IUCN Red List by Nieto et al 2014), North America (Grixti et al. 2007, Cameron et al. 2011, Burkle et al. 2013), South America (Morales et al. 2013; Schmid-Hempel et al. 2013), China and Japan (Xie et al. 2008; Williams et al. 2009; Matsumura et al. 2004; Inoue et al. 2008), and South Africa (Pauw 2007).

Honey bees – colony declines documented in Europe and North America (see reviews by NRC 2007, Potts et al. 2010) and evidence that global demand for honey bee pollination services is outstripping supply (Aizen and Harder 2009).

Hoverflies (Syrphidae) – diversity declines documented in Holland and Britain (Biesmeijer et al. 2006).

Butterflies and moths – diversity and abundance of Lepidoptera has declined in the UK (Gonzalez-Megias et al. 2008, Fox 2013), whilst in North America some 50 species are IUCN criteria Red Listed and there is particular concern about the iconic Monarch butterfly. Likewise a significant fraction of butterflies in other parts of the world are of conservation concern, e.g. Southern Africa, Australia, and Europe.

Flower-visiting wasps – reduction in country-level diversity in Britain (Ollerton et al. 2014).

Birds and mammals – the major vertebrate pollinators have recently been assessed at a global level by Regan et al. (2015) using IUCN Red List criteria. They concluded that: “overall, pollinating bird and mammal species are deteriorating in status, with more species moving toward extinction than away from it. On average, 2.5 species per year have moved one Red List category toward extinction in recent decades, representing a substantial increase in the extinction risk across this set of species”.

Of course a number of the studies cited above have shown that some species are doing better than others and a proportion of the taxa they have assessed are stable or even increasing in abundance (including managed honey bee colonies in some parts of the world). But the current evidence base, as I see it, is pointing towards significant declines in pollinator abundance and diversity at multiple spatial scales across all regions that have so-far been assessed with any rigour, for a wide range of taxa.

I’m happy to receive comments on this topic, particularly pointing me to major sources of evidence that I’ve not covered, or if you disagree with my conclusions.

References

Aizen and Harder (2009) The global stock of domesticated honeybees is growing slower than agricultural demand for pollination. Current Biology 19: 915–918.

Biesmeijer et al. (2006) Parallel declines in pollinators and insect-pollinated plants in Britain and the Netherlands. Science 313: 351–354.

Burkle et al. (2013) Plant-pollinator interactions over 120 years: Loss of species, co-occurrence, and function. Science 339, 1611–161.

Cameron et al. (2011) Patterns of widespread decline in North American bumble bees. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 108: 662–667.

Fox (2013) The decline of moths in Great Britain: a review of possible causes. Insect Conservation and Diversity 6: 5–19.

Gonzalez-Megias, A. et al. (2008) Changes in the composition of British butterfly assemblages over two decades. Global Change Biology, 14: 1464-1474.

Grixti (2009) Decline of bumble bees (Bombus) in the North American Midwest. Biol. Conserv. 142, 75–84 (2009).

Inoue et al. (2008). Displacement of Japanese native bumblebees by the recently introduced Bombus terrestris (L.) (Hymenoptera: Apidae). J. Insect Conserv. 12: 135–146.

Kosior (2007) The decline of the bumble bees and cuckoo bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae: Bombini) of Western and Central Europe. Oryx 41, 79–88.

Matsumura et al. (2004) Invasion status and potential ecological impacts of an invasive alien bumblebee, Bombus terrestris L. (Hymenoptera: Apidae) naturalized in Southern Hokkaido, Japan. Glob. Environ. Res. 8, 51–66.

National Resource Council (2007) Status of Pollinators in North America. National Academies Press, Washington, DC.

Nieto et al. (2014) European Red List of Bees. Publication Office of the European Union.

Ollerton et al. (2014) Extinction of aculeate pollinators in Britain and the role of large-scale agricultural changes. Science 346: 1360-1362.

Pauw (2007) Collapse of a pollination web in small conservation areas. Ecology 88: 1759-1769.

Potts et al. (2010) Declines of managed honey bees and beekeepers in Europe. Journal of Apicultural Research 49: 15–22.

Regan et al. (2015) Global Trends in the Status of Bird and Mammal Pollinators. Conservation Letters DOI: 10.1111/conl.12162

Schmid-Hempel et al. (2013) The invasion of southern South America by imported bumblebees and associated parasites. Journal of Animal Ecology 83: 823–837.

Williams et al. (2009) The bumblebees of Sichuan (Hymenoptera: Apidae, Bombini). Syst. Biodivers. 7: 101–189.

Xie et al. (2008) The effect of grazing on bumblebees in the high rangelands of the eastern Tibetan Plateau of Sichuan. Journal of Insect Conservation 12: 695–703 (2008).

Something for the weekend #6 – eco-gentrification, neonicotinoid pesticides, bees, birds, and bacteria

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The latest in a regular series of posts to biodiversity-related* items that have caught my attention during the week:

One of the unintended (and sometimes intended) consequences of greening our cities may be “eco-gentrification”, as property prices increase and low income families are displaced – this interesting article from The Guardian discusses the phenomenon and its possible solutions.

The evidence against neonicotinoid pesticides, and specifically their effect on bee populations, continues to mount. In this recent blog post, Philip Strange provides a very useful summary of the findings of some recent studies. The latest research was also covered on the BBC News website and I was struck by this quote from Nick von Westenholz, CEO of the Crop Protection Association, which represents the firms that produce neonicotinoid pesticides: “The latest studies in Nature must be seen in the context of ongoing campaign to discredit neonicotinoid pesticides, regardless of what the real evidence shows.” As if that’s how science actually works! All of us scientists gang together to discredit things. Clueless, and clearly fighting a desperate rear-guard action. There was also some interesting expert reaction on the Science Media website that’s worth reading.

China continues to throw up new species of birds, both fossil (from 125 million years ago) and living – the Sichuan bush warbler has been know about since 1987, but only just described. A nice example of the Slow Science praised by Brian McGill.

The tree of life just got more complex: a newly discovered phylum of prokaryotic microbes has genetic features in common with the eukaryotic domains (animals, plants, fungi, etc.) and provides clues as to how complex, multicellular life may have evolved. Here’s links to the abstract of the original paper and to a summary on the BBC News website.

Finally, as I write this, the results of the General Election are coming in and it looks very likely that the UK will have a majority Conservative government for the next five years. What that means for controversial, large scale developments such as HS2, and for wildlife, biodiversity, and the state of the UK’s ecosystems more generally, remains to be seen. It could be a bumpy few years.

Feel free to recommend links that have caught your eye.

*Disclaimer: may sometimes contain non-biodiversity-related items.

Urban bee diversity – a new study

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Over the past couple of years I’ve mentioned urban pollinators, and specifically the work of my PhD student Muzafar Hussain Sirohi, several times; for example here and here. Muzafar is currently finishing off the writing of his thesis, and during that time he’s also managed to publish the first paper from the study.

We are really pleased with this paper because not only is it the product of a lot of hard work to systematically sample and identify the bees, but the results are really exciting: Muzafar has shown that the centre of Northampton is home to a more diverse set of bee species than expected. In fact at least 50 species of bees are thought to live within a 500m radius of All Saints Church, which is significantly more than are found in the nature reserves at the edge of the town.

Muzafar’s work involved surveying the small gardens, road verges, traffic islands, and other patches of plants in the urban centre of Northampton. These areas provide important nectar and pollen sources for the bees, whilst old stone walls and bare soil offer opportunities for nesting sites. This community of bees includes one nationally rare Red Data Book species called Coelioxys quadridentata that is known from rather few sites.

Our estimate of about 50 species of bees is certainly too low because we focussed on the more neglected groups of bees and didn’t include the social bumblebees. The true figure is likely to be over 60 species, a remarkable number given the small area surveyed.

As I’ve discussed many times on this blog, pollinators such as bees are hugely important both ecologically (most plants require them for reproduction) and economically (much of our food production relies directly or indirectly on pollination by animals). However a significant proportion of bee species in the UK are declining in abundance, and some have gone extinct. Understanding how these bees are distributed across the landscape, including urban areas, is crucial to the conservation of such pollinators in a rapidly changing world. The project therefore has implications not only for conservation of biodiversity, but also food security, given the number of urban gardeners who grow their own food, and the ability of many bees to travel significant distance from urban to rural areas.

The research is published in the international, peer-reviewed Journal of Insect Conservation. The full reference (with a link to the abstract) is:

Sirohi, M.H., Jackson, J., Edwards, M. & Ollerton, J. (2015) Diversity and abundance of solitary and primitively eusocial bees in an urban centre: a case study from Northampton (England). Journal of Insect Conservation DOI 10.1007/s10841-015-9769-2

If anyone would like to receive a PDF of the paper, please leave a comment below or drop me an email: jeff.ollerton[at]northampton.ac.uk

Something for the weekend #5

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The latest in a regular series of posts to biodiversity-related* items that have caught my attention during the week:

The British Government’s official line on the impact of neonicotinoid pesticides on bee health is largely based on a widely criticised study conducted by the UK’s Food & Environment Research Agency (FERA) which concluded that there was no link to bumblebee pesticide exposure and colony performance. Professor Dave Goulson at the University of Sussex has now reanalysed the original data and shown that in fact there was a significant effect of the pesticides on those nests. You can read the study in full here. How could the FERA scientists get it so wrong? Were they influenced by Defra’s desire to come to a particular conclusion?

It will be interesting to see how FERA responds to this criticism of their work, though it may take a while to get a full answer: the lead scientist on the study now works for agrochemicals firm Syngenta….

The story has also been picked up by some media outlets, notably the Guardian. Pity they confused honey bees with bumblebees though – managed honey bees use human-made hives; bumblebees use nests (even artificial ones).

Sticking with pollinators, the European Commission’s Science for Environmental Policy news alert has run a story about our paper on bee and wasp extinctions published in the journal Science in December, as I reported on the blog. It’s great to see our work getting that level of exposure.

Archivists at the Geological Society have rediscovered a first edition map by William Smith, the father of British geology and stratigraphic palaeontology, who incidentally is buried at St Peter’s Church in Northampton.

The RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch, which I talked about in a post earlier this year, has reported its results. There seems to be good news for some species, but for others it was bad: for example, there’s been an 80% drop in observations of starling since the scheme began in 1979. Starlings are now RSPB Red Status due to their worrying decline; whilst they are still common, they are not anywhere near as common as they used to be.

Feel free to recommend links that have caught your eye.

*Disclaimer: may sometimes contain non-biodiversity-related links.

The state of bees: the European Red List has been published

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As I’ve frequently reported on this blog, there is growing global concern about declines in pollinator diversity and abundance across many regions, and much research is going on into what is causing those declines, their scale and consequences, and what can be done to reverse pollinator loss. It’s therefore great to see the publication of the European Red List of Bees which provides information on the conservation status of the c. 2000 species of bees in Europe.

The report uses standard IUCN criteria for assessing each species and has been picked up by various media and NGOs, who have typically promoted it with claims such as “Nearly one in 10 of Europe’s wild bee species face extinction“. However the reality of what the report has found is much more complex and nuanced than the headlines suggest. Over half of the bee species were classified as Data Deficient, meaning that we don’t have enough information to assess whether they are threatened or not. Of those that could be classified, 7 species are Critically Endangered, including 3 that are endemic to Europe and found nowhere else in the world; 46 are Endangered including 12 endemics; 24 are Vulnerable, with 7 endemic; 101 are Near Threatened with 17 endemic; 663 are Least Concern (68 endemic), meaning that there are no immediate threats to their survival.

If we turn the “1 in 10” headline around, then a more accurate statement would be “Over 90% of Europe’s bees (for which we have sufficient data) are not immediately threatened by extinction”. Of course that could change once data for the poorly studied species becomes available. These are not grounds for complacency; but neither are they grounds for panic.

The scale at which we assess biodiversity is critical if we are to fully understand the threats to species, and when and where limited funds can be prioritised for conservation actions. Species that are locally endangered or even extinct may actually be quite common when assessed across the whole of their distributional range. For this reason it’s important to consider the status of species in as wide a geographic region as is possible. Preferably this would mean a global assessment; but for most species we simply don’t have enough information to be able to undertake such a study, particularly for developing countries where there are limited historical records of species occurrences on which to draw. Even in a relatively developed region such as Europe, with a long history of natural history observation and monitoring, there are huge gaps in our knowledge – in this case for more than half of Europe’s bees.

With this in mind I looked at the European status of those bee species which are now extinct in the UK, as I discussed in December. Two of the extinct species are considered Critical (Bombus cullumanus and Andrena tridentata); two are Near Threatened (Dufourea minuta and D. halictula); seven other species are Least Concern; and the remaining two (Andrena lepida and A. lathyri) are Data Deficient. Clearly some of the UK extinct species are in trouble across Europe, but others are not and may re-colonise the UK in the future, as we believe may have happened in the last couple of years for Andrena vaga. Or they could be helped to re-colonise via a reintroduction programme, as has been done for Bombus subterraneus

Another way in which to put the findings of this report into a wider context is to consider how the level of threat to bees compares with that of other groups of species. The authors helpfully provide some comparative data in the summary, which I’ve graphed below (click on it for a better view):

Overall the proportion of threatened bees is identical to that of butterflies, perhaps because they require some similar resources (flowers on which to feed) and tend to be found in broadly similar habitats. But other taxa are at much greater risk, particularly freshwater fish and molluscs: yet these taxa have not received the same level of publicity about their plight. Their are no “Save the Mussels” campaigns, or television series about endangered fish in rivers and lakes. This is surprising: clearly bees have grabbed the public’s attention because of the role they play in crop pollination, but freshwater fish are also suppliers of ecosystem services either directly (fishing) or indirectly (playing a role in maintaining the “health” of these ecosystems, as do the molluscs). Perhaps more importantly for these species, they are also indicators of water quality, an aspect of natural capital that concerns us all.

The authors of the European Red List of Bees are to be congratulated on a fine piece of work that makes a major contribution to our understanding of pollinator conservation, and is timely, coming soon after the publication of the National Pollinator Strategy for England. However there’s still a lot of work to do to fill in the gaps for species that are Data Deficient and to understand the more detailed population trends, which are unknown for almost 80% of the bee species.

One of the most surprising findings, though, is that the honey bee (Apis mellifera), the most intensively researched pollinating insect on the planet, is considered Data Deficient “until further research enables us to differentiate between wild and non-wild colonies in order to determine the conservation status of the species in the wild.” That’s an interesting state of affairs!

Full citation:

Nieto, A., Roberts, S.P.M., Kemp, J., Rasmont, P., Kuhlmann, M., García Criado, M., Biesmeijer, J.C., Bogusch, P., Dathe, H.H., De la Rúa, P., De Meulemeester, T., Dehon, M., Dewulf, A., Ortiz-Sánchez, F.J., Lhomme, P., Pauly, A., Potts, S.G., Praz, C., Quaranta, M., Radchenko, V.G., Scheuchl, E., Smit, J., Straka, J., Terzo, M., Tomozii, B., Window, J. and Michez, D. 2014. European Red List of bees. Luxembourg: Publication Office of the European Union.

How do animals respond to solar eclipses? Please share your observations.

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If you have been anywhere in the Palearctic during the past 48 hours then you can’t have missed the fact that we experienced that most rare of astronomical phenomena, a solar eclipse. The eclipse was total only as far north as the Faroe Islands and Svalbard; further south it was partial and here in Northampton the eclipse was perhaps 80-90% total.

It’s been big news with lots of public interest. As well as explaining the astronomy of eclipses, various commentators on current affairs and science programmes have talked about how animals respond to eclipses. This is a topic that’s intrigued me ever since the August 1999 eclipse. During that event I was carrying out field work in a Northampton grassland and as the eclipse reached its maximum the bumblebees and butterflies on the site stopped flying and foraging, and settled into the grass. Once the eclipse had passed they carried on as before. I don’t have any hard data to demonstrate the effect, it was purely an observation of what was happening around me.

Since then I’ve waited over 15 years for the next opportunity to observe how solar eclipses affect animal behaviour. Unfortunately there are few pollinators flying at the moment so I had to content myself with watching the gulls, woodpigeons, carrion crows and other birds on the Racecourse park adjacent to the university.

This time I took some video footage before, during and after the eclipse, noted the birds’ behaviour, flying, calls and singing. And guess what? As far as I could tell the eclipse had no effect on the birds! They behaved as if nothing was happening. Even a mistle thrush than had been singing all morning from a perch in one of the boundary lime trees continued its song as the moon passed in front of the sun.

That really surprised me! I was expecting the birds to at least reduce their activity as has been noted in previous eclipses. But they didn’t as far as I could tell. Perhaps it was the type of birds I was observing? Or the time of year? Or the fact that the eclipse was only partial? Lots of questions but it’s difficult to do repeat observations for this kind of science – the next British total eclipse is not until 2090!

What did you see? Did you notice any effect of the eclipse on animal behaviour? Or did you, like me, see no effect of the eclipse. I’d be interested to hear your observations.

Something for the weekend #4

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The latest in a regular series of posts to biodiversity-related* items that have caught my attention during the week:

It’s been a good week for birds: Jerdon’s babbler, a species thought to have been extinct for over 70 years, has been rediscovered in Myanmar, whilst the Blue-bearded helmetcrest, a hummingbird not seen for 69 years, has recently been photographed in Colombia.

Why are ecological research funding agencies willing to provide large sums of money for short-term projects, but not more modest sums for long-term monitoring research? Ignasi Bartomeus thinks this is an important question, and I very much agree.

Related to this, prominent ecologist Charley Krebs asks why physical sciences take the largest share of science budgets, given the importance (and urgency) of global environmental problems. Charley’s text books have long been required reading on our undergraduate degrees, including his latest The Ecological World View.

The known species diversity of the oceans has just been cut by about half. That’s a good thing as it firms up the science behind understanding patterns of marine biodiversity.

Love beer? Love nature. I love both 🙂

An opportunity to decide on Britain’s national bird – cast your vote now.

Finally and close to home, the Northampton Greyfriars Bus Station, widely regarded as one of the ugliest buildings in Britain, was demolished with a set of controlled explosions. What’s that got to do with biodiversity, I hear you ask? Well the area of green space visible as a still before the video starts, and shown later at 0:45 and 1:15, was one of the field sites used by my PhD student Muzafar Hussain during his surveys of urban solitary bees, which I’ve talked about previously, e.g. here and here. That patch of green, a rather neglected area of urban grassland with some scattered trees, was home to at least 17 species of bees. Will they survive the demolition? Hopefully, though the future redevelopment of the area may result in their loss. But that’s been happening to urban bee populations for centuries, and they are adaptable and mobile. I’ll talk more about Muzafar’s work in a post in the near future as the first manuscript from his PhD research has been accepted for publication.

Feel free to recommend links that have caught your eye.

*Disclaimer: may sometimes contain non-biodiversity-related links.

What Einstein didn’t say about bees – UPDATE – May 2021

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It’s more than 6 years (!) since I wrote this post. Over that period I’ve been asked many times about the Einstein bee quote and I’ve always replied that it’s made up, and that further more, Einstein was a physicist: he had no interest in bees!

Turns out, that’s not quite correct. There’s still no evidence that Einstein stated the infamous bee quote; however he does seem to have had an interest in bees. A newly-discovered letter from the great man mentions his admiration of the work of Karl von Frisch, whose research on the honey bee ‘waggle dance’ earned him a Nobel Prize. There’s a couple of news stories online about this: here’s one from Cosmos, and another from The Conversation. The original paper discussing the letter, by Adrian Dyer and colleagues, can be viewed here.

So I will have to moderate my response in the future, but it doesn’t change the big picture: Einstein never said it!

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In the 100th anniversary year since Albert Einstein published the paper on his General Theory of Relativity, it’s saddening to think that one of the things that he will be best remembered for is something he did not say. There are various versions of it, but they all amount to the same thing:

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

This statement could be dissected and disproved in numerous ways: for example, there’s over 20,000 species of bees, so what is “the bee”? Plus most of our crops are not bee (or even insect) pollinated, they are wind pollinated grasses such as wheat and rice. Etc. etc.

But what is particularly annoying about it is – EINSTEIN NEVER SAID IT! As far as anyone is aware he had no interest in bees whatsoever and the original source was a Canadian beekeepers’ journal in the 1940s.

It’s even more annoying that, despite the fact that we’ve known the statement is both factually incorrect and not by the great man, documentary film makers and journalists are STILL using it to support their work. The latest example I’ve seen is this documentary, the poster of which is shown above.

Rant over: back to reading paperwork for a meeting this afternoon.

UPDATE: I’d forgotten that Tom Breeze at University of Reading posted a fuller account of Einstein’s (non) quote last year – here’s the link.

Monitoring the biodiversity impact of the new Waterside Campus

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All human activities can potentially have an impact on the biodiversity of the local environment in which they occur. That impact can be positive or negative, depending upon how the activity is managed, how impact is mitigated, and the metrics that we use to measure the effects that are occurring. This is particularly true of large infrastructure developments such as big buildings, housing developments, roads, and, a category close to home for me at the moment, new university campuses.

I’ve written before about the University of Northampton’s plans to build the new Waterside Campus on brownfield land close to the River Nene, here and here. It’s a huge project, likely to cost in excess of £330 million on a site covering about 20 hectares.

As you might imagine, such an ambitious scheme has not been without its controversies and there is much debate within the university about changes to how we work and interact with colleagues and students, provision of teaching and research spaces, etc. There’s also been much discussion within the town, though the general feeling amongst the public (as far as I perceive it) is that bringing the university closer to the centre of Northampton will provide a much-needed economic boost and add significantly to the town’s life.

But what effect will such a development have on the wildlife in and around this peri-urban site, given that it’s in the middle of the Nene Valley Nature Improvement Area and very close to internationally important bird sites?

Over the past few months, together with my colleague Dr Janet Jackson, I’ve been taking part in meetings with the Waterside project’s landscape architects (LUC), other partners from the NIA project board, and the local Wildlife Trust. We’ve been discussing the current plans for the green infrastructure of the campus and thinking about how these can be enhanced. It’s been a fascinating process as initial disagreements have been negotiated towards compromises and additions that everyone is happy with, balancing budgetary, function and space restrictions with habitat creation and landscape enhancement.

There’s too much been discussed to give a full account at this stage, and it’s possible that some details will change over time, but the current Ecology Strategy document produced by LUC shows that there will be more than 10 hectares of habitat creation on the site, including species-rich grassland, woodland patches, brown and green roofs, swales and damp areas, and recreated brownfield habitat. The latter is particularly exciting and something of an experiment, as much of the (albeit limited) current wildlife interest on the site relates to the brownfield element, including the “urban tundra“.

To put the 10 hectares into perspective, the adjacent Wildlife Trust Local Nature Reserve of Barnes Meadow is only 20 hectares in area, so it’s potentially increasing that site by 50%. It’s rare for academic ecologists such as Janet and myself to be able to influence large building developments, so this has been an exciting opportunity for us to make a contribution that (if all goes to plan) will have a positive effect on biodiversity conservation in the Nene Valley.

But how will we know if the Great Waterside Experiment has been a success and that the biodiversity of the new campus is at least as rich, and preferably richer, in species than it was before building took place?

Monitoring of the wildlife is key to this. Fortunately we have some base-line surveys of birds, plants and invertebrates (including bees and butterflies) from before building started that we can compare with later surveys during and after the campus build. That process has already started, and with my colleague Dr Duncan McCollin and with two keen second-year students, Jo and Charlie, we have already completed three winter bird surveys to get a sense of how the current site clearance and ground works is affecting the presence of birds in and around the development, including those using the River Nene. The plan is to continue these surveys up to and after the campus opens in 2018, to give us a data series showing the influence of the campus on bird diversity and numbers.

The initial results are currently being analysed and it appears that the current phase of building has reduced overall bird diversity by about 30%, and that red and amber status birds (of most conservation concern) have been affected more than green status birds, as this figure demonstrates (click on it for a closer view):

These rough figures hide a lot of detail, however. For example, there has been some addition of species in 2014-15 that were not recorded in 2012-13, including Coot, Treecreeper and the amber-status Stock dove. More importantly, some of the amber status birds that we didn’t record on site in 2014-15, we know from additional surveys are still present in habitats within 500 metres of the development, for example Dunnock, Green woodpecker, and Bullfinch. Similarly, red status birds such as resident Starling, and winter migrant Fieldfare and Redwing occur within at least one kilometre of the site. Hopefully as the building work progresses towards completion these (and other) species will return, so at the moment we’re not too concerned by their disappearance from the site.

Later in the spring we will conduct a couple of breeding bird surveys, and continue surveying for the next few years until the campus opens in 2018. Only then will we see exactly how successful our influence has been. In the mean time I’ll report back as and when we have more data to share.