Category Archives: Biodiversity

A Christmas discount for my new book and some recent social media comments

Pollinators are responsible for producing much of the traditional Christmas food that we enjoy at this time of the year, and add considerable value to the holly and mistletoe that decorates our homes in northern Europe and elsewhere. The link between pollinators and Christmas is something that I discuss in my new book Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society. As a special seasonal gift, the publishers (Pelagic) are offering a 30% discount on orders in the run up to Christmas. To claim the discount follow that previous link and use the code CHRISTMAS30 at the checkout. UPDATE: Apologies, the publisher tells me that the discount period has now passed.

Although the book has not yet been formally reviewed in any journal or other form of media, I’ve had some very nice (and unsolicited) comments about it via Twitter . Here’s some examples:

This new book is SUPERB. It contains everything I’ve spent the last 10 years trying to grasp, all in one book, AND written in a way I can understand! I cannot tell you how much I’m learning from it already. It makes such a difference to a non-scientist (like me) to be able to grasp the facts, and the science behind the facts, without having to first look up dozens of terms I don’t understand.
Brigit Strawbridge Howard – author of Dancing With Bees

Good to see discussions of ecology, culture and politics together.
Anon

I was delighted to receive this superb book over the weekend. It’s an extremely informative read for anyone interested in the subject of pollination!
Anon

Looking forward to reading this. I like the tone of what I’ve dipped into so far, really engaging and none of that turgid academic English that gives me a headache!
Steven Falk – author of Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland

Thanks everyone!

Finally, a physical copy of my book!

12 Replies

Yesterday I was delighted to finally receive an advance copy of my book Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society! It’s been over three years in the writing and production, much longer than I had anticipated. But, as I describe in its pages, the book is the culmination of >50 years of experience, study and research. So perhaps three years isn’t so bad…

If you’re interested in buying a copy you can order it direct from Pelagic Publishing and from most of the large online booksellers. Let me know what you think.

Why are bees like Bactrian camels? Because they both have two humps!

4 Replies

It was eminent bee biologist Charles Michener who first* pointed out that there was something odd about the global distribution of bees. In his 1979 paper Biogeography of the bees he writes:

“unlike many groups which abound in the tropics, bees attain their greatest abundance in warm temperate areas”

Think about that for a moment: in contrast to most other groups of insects, birds, mammals, flowering plants, fish, indeed the majority of the Earth’s biodiversity, bees are NOT generally at their most species rich in tropical areas. Rather, we have to move north and south of the equator to find them at their highest diversity. This is an odd pattern of distribution for such a successful (> 20,000 species), globally widespread and ecologically important group of organisms.

Some 15 years ago I was inspired by Michener’s comments when, together with colleagues Steve Johnson and Andrew Hingston, we wrote a chapter called Geographical variation in diversity and specificity of pollination systems for the 2006 Waser & Ollerton edited volume Plant-pollinator Interactions: from Specialization to Generalization. In that chapter we presented a rough analysis of how bee diversity per unit area in different countries changes with latitude. This, and a follow-up that appeared in my 2017 Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics paper, confirmed Michener’s view that there’s an unusual relationship between bee diversity and latitude, with peak species richness outside of the tropics, in warm, dry environments.

What I really hoped over this time was that some serious bee biologists would follow up Michener’s insights and produce a full analysis of how bee diversity changes across the planet. Yesterday that hope was realised when Michael Orr, Alice Hughes, Douglas Chesters, John Pickering, Chao-Dong Zhu and John Ascher published the first analysis of bee diversity across the whole planet, and its underlying causes, in their open-access paper Global Patterns and Drivers of Bee Distribution.

Their analyses are based on a data set of >5,800,000 records of where bees occur and it’s been an incredible achievement to bring all of that together into a planet-wide view of where bees are found, and why. I highly recommend that you download and read it, it’s an impressive piece of work.

What have camels got to do with all of this? Well, as the authors show in their paper (from which the image above is taken), if you graph up the increase in bee species richness with latitude from the poles in each hemisphere, you get two humps at about 35 degrees north and south of the equator: like a Bactrian camel. In contrast, as I noted above, if you were to do the same for for most other species you’d get a single hump at the equator: like a dromedary camel.

One of the key drivers of this bimodal pattern seems to be the amount of rainfall in an environment – bees do not like it too wet, in contrast to their relatives the ants which do show the more typical tropical peak in diversity. As the authors put it:

“humidity may play a key role in limiting bee distribution, such as through spoilage of pollen resources”

One of the implications of this for the biogeography of plant-pollinator interactions is that we might expect there to be a greater diversity of different types of pollinators in areas where bees are not so abundant. And indeed that is exactly what we find: in that Ollerton, Johnson and Hingston book chapter I mentioned we showed that there’s a step-change in the diversity of functionally specialised pollination systems as one moves from the sub-tropics into the tropics. There could be many reason for that but I suspect that one is a relative lack of bees compared to the number of plants species; thus you get tropical “oddities” such as specialised cockroach pollination in some plants.

Orr et al.’s paper is a milestone in bee biogeography and opens up new opportunities for conserving these insects, and their vital relationships with the flowering plants. To give just one example: these analyses provide a framework for predicting bee diversity hotspots in parts of the world that have been poorly explored by bee taxonomists, but which are nevertheless severely threatened by habitat degradation and conversion to agriculture. It could also be used for predicting how climate change might affect future bee distributions, especially in parts of the world that are expected to become wetter. I’m looking forward to seeing how the team’s work develops in the future.

——————————————–

*It’s always risky to state “first”, but Michener was certainly the first that I am aware of. Let me know if you’ve come across any precedents.

SCAPE 2020 by the numbers

SCAPE 2020 – pollinators & pollination conference: here’s the programme

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There’s still a few hours left in which to register to attend the SCAPE 2020 pollinators and pollination conference. Follow the links on the website: https://scape-pollination.org/

The programme is more or less finalised and is shown below. We have an amazing range of topics being presented from both established and early career researchers, including two keynote lectures, plus posters. It’s going to be a very exciting weekend of science!

PROGRAMME

Talk types:

K = Keynote

ST = Standard (10 minutes talk + 5 for questions)

F = Flash talk (5 minutes, no questions)

Friday 6^th November – all timings are GMT (London) time

Timing	Type	Name	Title	Ref
09.00 –09.15		Jeff Ollerton	Open conference and welcome
09.15 –10.15	K	Lynn Dicks	Understanding the risks to human well-being from pollinator decline	K.01
10.15 –10.30		Comfort break	Time to top up your coffee
Session 1		Chair: Jeff Ollerton	Agriculture – 1
10.30 – 10.45	ST	Ke Chen	Indirect and additive effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi on insect pollination and crop yield of raspberry under different fertilizer levels	1.01
10.45 – 11.00	ST	Julia Osterman	Enhancing mason bee populations for sweet cherry pollination	1.02
11.00 – 11.15	ST	Idan Kahnonitch	Viral distributions in bee communities: associations to honeybee density and flower visitation frequency	1.03
11.15 – 11.30	ST	Anna Birgitte Milford	Who takes responsibility for the bees?	1.04
11.30 – 11.45	ST	Emma Gardner	Boundary features increase and stabilise bee populations and the pollination of mass-flowering crops in rotational systems	1.05
11.45 – 12.00	ST	Stephanie Maher	Evaluating the quantity and quality of resources for pollinators on Irish farms	1.06
12.00 –12.05	F	Thomas Timberlake	Pollinators and human nutrition in rural Nepal: experiences of remote data collection during a global pandemic	1.07
12.05 –12.15		Comfort break
Session 2		Chair: Jane Stout	Agriculture – 2
12.15 – 12.30	ST	Michael Image	The impact of agri-environment schemes on crop pollination services at national scale	2.01
12.30 – 12.45	ST	Nicola Tommasi	Plant – pollinator interactions in sub-Saharan agroecosystems	2.02
12.45 – 13.00	ST	Tal Shapira	The combined effects of resource-landscape and herbivory on pollination services in agro-ecosystems	2.03
13.00 – 13.15	ST	Márcia Motta Maués	Despite the megadiversity of flower visitors, native bees are essential to açai palm (Euterpe oleracea Mart.) pollination at the Amazon estuary	2.04
13.15 – 13.30	ST	Sabrina Rondeau	Quantifying exposure of bumblebee queens to pesticide residues when hibernating in agricultural soils	2.05
13.30 –13.35	F	Maxime Eeraerts	Landscapes with high amounts of mass-flowering fruit crops reduce the reproduction of two solitary bees	2.06
13.35 – 13.40	F	Patricia Nunes-Silva	Crop domestication, flower characteristics and interaction with pollinators: the case of Cucurbita pepo (Cucurbitaceae)	2.07
13.40 – 14.30		Lunch break
Session 3		Chair: Mariano Devoto	Networks and communities
14.30 – 14.45	ST	Kit Prendergast	Plant-pollinator networks in Australian urban bushland remnants are not structurally equivalent to those in residential gardens	3.01
14.45 – 14.50	F	Kavya Mohan	Structure of plant-visitor networks in a seasonal southern Indian habitat	3.02
14.50 – 14.55	F	Opeyemi Adedoja	Asynchrony among insect pollinator groups and flowering plants with elevation	3.03
14.55 – 15.10	ST	Yael Mandelik	Rangeland sharing by cattle and bees: moderate grazing does not impair bee communities and resource availability	3.04
15.10 – 15.25	ST	Felipe Torres-Vanegas	Landscape change reduces pollen quality indirectly by shifting the functional composition of pollinator communities	3.05
15.25 – 15.40	ST	Isabela Vilella-Arnizaut	Quantifying plant-pollinator interactions in the Prairie Coteau	3.06
15.40 – 15.55		Comfort break
Session 4		Chair: Nina Sletvold	Conservation perspectives – 1
15.55 – 16.10	ST	Lise Ropars	Seasonal dynamics of competition between honeybees and wild bees in a protected Mediterranean scrubland	4.01
16.10 – 16.25	ST	Philip Donkersley	A One-Health model for reversing honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) decline	4.02
16.25 – 16.40	ST	Nicholas Tew	Nectar supply in gardens: spatial and temporal variation	4.03
16.40 – 16.55	ST	Peter Graystock	The effects of environmental toxicants on the health of bumble bees and their microbiomes	4.04
16.55 – 17.10	ST	Hauke Koch	Flagellum removal by a heather nectar metabolite inhibits infectivity of a bumblebee parasite	4.05
17.10 – 17.25		Comfort break
Session 5		Chair: Anders Nielsen	Conservation perspectives – 2
17.25 – 17.40	ST	Miranda Bane	Pollinators on Guernsey and a Pesticide-free Plan	5.01
17.40 – 17.55	ST	Jamie Wildman	Reintroducing Carterocephalus palaemon to England: using the legacy of a locally extinct butterfly as a (morpho)metric of future success	5.02
17.55 – 18.10	ST	Sjirk Geerts	Invasive alien Proteaceae lure some, but not other nectar feeding bird pollinators away from native Proteaceae in South African fynbos	5.03
18.10 – 18.25	ST	Sissi Lozada Gobilard	Habitat quality and connectivity in kettle holes enhance bee diversity in agricultural landscapes	5.04
18.25 –18.45		Comfort break
18.45 – 23.59		Themed discussion rooms open

Saturday 7^th November – all timings are GMT (London) time

Timing	Type	Name	Title	Ref
08.55 – 09.00		Jeff Ollerton	Reminders and announcements
Session 6		Chair: Jeff Ollerton	Conservation perspectives – 3
09.00 – 09.15	ST	Paolo Biella	The effects of landscape composition and climatic variables on pollinator abundances and foraging along a gradient of increasing urbanization	6.01
09.15 – 09.30	ST	James Rodger	Potential impacts of pollinator declines on plant seed production and population viability	6.02
09.30 – 09.45	ST	Emilie Ellis	Moth assemblages within urban domestic gardens respond positively to habitat complexity, but only at a scale that extends beyond the garden boundary	6.03
09.45 – 10.00	ST	Samuel Boff	Novel pesticide class impact foraging behaviour in wild bees	6.04
10.00 – 10.15		Comfort break	Time to top up your coffee
Session 7		Chair: Jon Agren	Conservation perspectives – 4
10.15 – 10.20	F	Maisie Brett	The impacts of invasive Acacias on the pollination networks of South African Fynbos habitats	7.01
10.20 – 10.25	F	Joseph Millard	Global effects of land-use intensity on local pollinator biodiversity	7.02
10.25 – 10.30	F	Susanne Butschkau	How does land-use affect the mutualistic outcomes of bee-plant interactions?	7.03
10.30 – 10.35	F	Elżbieta Rożej-Pabijan	Impact of wet meadow translocation on species composition of bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Apiformes)	7.04
10.35 – 10.40	F	Lorenzo Guzzetti	May urbanization affect the quality of pollinators diet? A case-study from Milan, Italy.	7.05
10.40 – 10.45	F	Emiliano Pioltelli	Functional traits variation in two bumblebee species along a gradient of landscape anthropization	7.06
10.45 – 11.00		Comfort break
Session 8		Chair: Marcos Mendez	Pollinator behaviour – 1
11.00 – 11.15	ST	Hema Somanathan	Foraging on left-overs: comparative resource use in diurnal and nocturnal bees	8.01
11.15 – 11.30	ST	Sajesh Vijayan	To leave or to stay? Answers from migratory waggle dances in Apis dorsata	8.02
11.30 – 11.45	ST	Balamurali MGS	Decision making in the Asian honeybee Apis cerana is influenced by innate sensory biases and associative learning at different spatial scales	8.03
11.45 – 12.00	ST	Gemma Villagomez	Resource intake of stingless bee colonies in a tropical ecosystem in Ecuador	8.04
12.00 – 12.15	ST	Ola Olsson	Pollen analysis using deep learning – better, stronger, faster	8.05
12.15 – 13.00		Lunch break
Session 9		Chair: Magne Friberg	Pollinator behaviour – 2
13.00 – 13.15	ST	Shuxuan Jing	‘Interviewing’ pollinators in the red clover field: foraging behaviour	9.01
13.15 – 13.30	ST	Océane Bartholomée	How to eat in the shade? Bumblebees’ behavior in partially shaded flower strips	9.02
13.30 – 13.45	ST	Manuela Giovanetti	Megachile sculpturalis: insights on the nesting activity of an alien bee species	9.03
13.45 – 14.00	ST	Zahra Moradinour	The allometry of sensory system in the butterfly Pieris napi	9.04
14.00 – 14.05	F	Pierre Tichit	New insights into the visual ecology of bees	9.05
14.05 – 14.10	F	Fabian Ruedenauer	Does pollinator dependence correlate with the nutritional profile of pollen in plants?	9.06
14.10 – 14.15	F	Hannah Burger	Floral signals involved in host finding by nectar-foraging social wasps	9.07
14.15 – 14.30		Comfort break
Session 10		Chair: ‪ Amy Parachnowitsch	Floral scent
14.30 – 14.45	ST	Herbert Braunschmid	Does the rarity of a flower´s scent phenotype in a deceptive orchid explain its pollination success?	10.01
14.45 – 15.00	ST	Yedra García	Ecology and evolution of floral scent compartmentalization	10.02
15.00 – 15.15	ST	Manoj Kaushalya Rathnayake	Does floral scent changes with pollinator syndrome?	10.03
15.15 – 15.20	F	Hanna Thosteman	The chemical landscape of Arabis alpina	10.04
15.20 – 15.25	F	Laura S. Hildesheim	Patterns of floral scent composition in species providing resin pollinator rewards	10.05
15.25 – 15.30	F	Christine Rose-Smyth	Does Myrmecophila thomsoniana (Orchidaceae) use uncoupled mimicry to obtain pollination?	10.06
15.30 – 15.45		Comfort break
Session 11		Chair: Renate Wesselingh	Pollination ecology and floral evolution – 1
15.45 – 16.00	ST	Rachel Spigler	Adaptive plasticity of floral display and its limits	11.01
16.00 – 16.15	ST	Wendy Semski	Individual flowering schedules and floral display size in monkeyflower: a common garden study	11.02
16.15 – 16.30	ST	Carlos Martel	Specialization for tachinid fly pollination and the evolutionary divergence between varieties of the orchid Neotinea ustulata	11.03
16.30 – 16.45	ST	Marcela Moré	Different points of view in a changing world: The tobacco tree flowers through the eyes of its pollinators in native and non-native ranges	11.05
16.45 – 17.00		Comfort break
17.00 – 18.00		Poster discussion rooms open	A chance to talk with the author of the posters
18.00 – 23.59		Themed discussion rooms open

Sunday 8^th November – all timings are GMT (London) time

Timing	Type	Name	Title	Ref
08.55 – 09.00		Jeff Ollerton	Reminders and announcements
09.00 – 10.00	K	Scott Armbruster	Pollination accuracy explains the evolution of floral movements	K.02
10.00 – 10.15		Comfort break	Time to top up your coffee
Session 12		Chair: Jeff Ollerton	Pollination ecology and floral evolution – 2
10.15 – 10.30	ST	Kazuharu Ohashi	Three options are better than two: complementary nature of different pollination modes in Salix caprea	12.01
10.30 – 10.45	ST	James Cook	Why size matters in fig-pollinator mutualisms	12.02
10.45 – 11.00	ST	Yuval Sapir	Within-population flower colour variation: beyond pollinator-mediated selection	12.03
11.00 – 11.15	ST	Henninge Torp Bie	Flower visitation of the Sticky catchfly (Viscaria vulgaris) on isles within isle.	12.04
11.15 – 11.20
11.20 – 11.30		Comfort break
Session 13		Chair: Yuval Sapir	Pollination ecology and floral evolution – 3
11.30 – 11.45	ST	Jonas Kuppler	Impacts of drought on floral traits, plant-pollinator interactions and plant reproductive success – a meta-analysis	13.01
11.45 – 12.00	ST	Carmen Villacañas de Castro	Cost/benefit ratio of a nursery pollination system in natural populations: a model application	13.02
12.00 – 12.15	ST	Anna E-Vojtkó	Floral and reproductive plant functional traits as an independent axis of plant ecological strategies	13.03
12.15 – 12.30	ST	Camille Cornet	Role of pollinators in prezygotic isolation between calcicolous and silicicolous ecotypes of Silene nutans	13.04
12.30 – 12.45	ST	Courtney Gorman	Phenological and pollinator-mediated isolation among selfing and outcrossing Arabidopsis lyrata populations	13.05
12.45 – 13.45		Lunch break
Session 14		Chair: Rocio Barrales	Pollination ecology and floral evolution – 4
13.45 – 14.00	ST	Danae Laina	Geographic differences in pollinator availability in the habitats shape the degree of pollinator specialization in the deceptive Arum maculatum L. (Araceae)	14.01
14.00 – 14.15	ST	Eva Gfrerer	Is the inflorescence scent of Arum maculatum L. (Araceae) in populations north vs. south of the Alps locally adapted to a variable pollinator climate?	14.02
14.15 – 14.30	ST	Kelsey Byers	Pollinators and visitors to Gymnadenia orchids: historical and modern data reveal associations between insect proboscis and floral nectar spur length	14.03
14.30 – 14.45	ST	Nina Jirgal	Orientation matters: effect of floral symmetry and orientation on pollinator entry angle	14.04
14.45 – 15.00	ST	Alice Fairnie	Understanding the development, evolution and function of the bullseye pigmentation pattern in Hibiscus trionum	14.05
15.00 – 15.15		Comfort break
Session 15		Chair: Maria Clara Castellanos	Pollination ecology and floral evolution – 5
15.15 – 15.30	ST	Jon Ågren	On the measurement and meaning of pollinator-mediated selection	15.01
15.30 – 15.45	ST	Katarzyna Roguz	Plants taking charge: Autonomous self-pollination as response to plants-pollinator mismatch in Fritillaria persica	15.02
15.45 – 16.00	ST	Mario Vallejo-Marin	Bees vs flies: Comparison of non-flight vibrations and implications for buzz pollination	15.03
16.00 – 16.15	ST	Agnes Dellinger	Linking flower morphology to pollen-release dynamics: buzz-pollination in Melastomataceae	15.04
16.15 – 16.30	ST	Lucy Nevard	Are bees and flowers tuned to each other? Variation in the natural frequency of buzz-pollinated flowers.	15.05
16.30 – 16.35	F	Gabriel Chagas Lanes	An investigation of pollen movement and release by poricidal anthers using mathematical billiards	15.06
16.35 – 16.40	F	Rebecca Hoefer	The magnitude of water stress and high soil nitrogen decreases plants reproductive success	15.07
16.40 – 16.45	F	Marta Barberis	May ecotonal plants attract less efficient pollinators to stay on the safe side?	15.08
16.45 – 17.00		Comfort break
Session 16		Chair: Jeff Ollerton	Pollination ecology and floral evolution – 6
17.00 – 17.15	ST	Gabriela Doria	Petal cell shape and flower-pollinator interaction in Nicotiana	16.01
17.15 – 17.30	ST	Nathan Muchhala	The long stems characteristic of bat-pollinated flowers greatly reduce bat search times while foraging	16.02
17.30 – 17.35	F	Juan Isaac Moreira-Hernández	Differential tolerance to heterospecific pollen deposition in sympatric species of bat-pollinated Burmeistera (Campanulaceae: Lobelioideae)	16.03
17.35 – 17.40	F	Juan José Domínguez-Delgado	Does autopolyploidy contribute to shape plant-pollinator interactions?	16.04
17.40 – 17.45	F	Caio Simões Ballarin	How many animal-pollinated plants are nectar-producing?	16.05
17.45 – 17.50	F	Ana Clara Ibañez	Concerted evolution between flower phenotype and pollinators in Salpichroa (Solanaceae)	16.06
17.50 – 18.15		Jeff Ollerton	Prize announcements, conference handover and close.	16.07

Cockroaches as pollinators: a new example just published

8 Replies

When you think of the word “pollinator” what comes to mind? For most people it will be bees, particularly the western honeybee (Apis mellifera). Some might also think of hoverflies, butterflies, moths, bats, hummingbirds…..but cockroaches?! The first published example that I know of which demonstrated that the flowers of a plant are specialised for cockroach pollination is from the mid-1990s. Since then only a handful of well documented cases have come to light, but there are undoubtedly more out there waiting to be discovered, particularly in the wet tropics. Most of the c. 4,600 species of cockroaches are nocturnal, and cockroach-pollinated flowers tend to open at night, which is one reason why they are under documented.

In a new study, published this week in the American Journal of Botany, a team of Chinese, German and British biologists has shown that a species of Apocynaceae from China is the first known example of cockroach pollination in that large family. Here’s the reference with a link to the study; if anyone wants a copy please email me:

Xiong, W., Ollerton, J., Liede-Schumann, S., Zhao, W., Jiang, Q., Sun, H. Liao, W. & You, W. (2020) Specialized cockroach pollination in the rare and endangered plant Vincetoxicum hainanense (Apocynaceae, Asclepiadoideae) in China. American Journal of Botany (in press)

The abstract for the paper follows:

Premise

Species of Apocynaceae are pollinated by a diverse assemblage of animals. Here we report the first record of specialized cockroach pollination in the family, involving an endangered climbing vine species, Vincetoxicum hainanense in China. Experiments were designed to provide direct proof of cockroach pollination and compare the effectiveness of other flower visitors.

Methods

We investigated the reproductive biology, pollination ecology, pollinaria removal, pollinia insertion, and fruit set following single visits by the most common insects. In addition, we reviewed reports of cockroaches as pollinators of other plants and analyzed the known pollination systems in Vincetoxicum in a phylogenetic context.

Results

The small, pale green flowers of V. hainanense opened during the night. The flowers were not autogamous, but were self‐compatible. Flower visitors included beetles, flies, ants and bush crickets, but the most effective pollinator was the cockroach Blattella bisignata, the only visitor that carried pollen between plants. Less frequent and effective pollinators are ants and Carabidae. Plants in this genus are predominantly pollinated by flies, moths and wasps.

Conclusions

Globally, only 11 plant species are known to be cockroach‐pollinated. Because their range of floral features encompass similarities and differences, defining a “cockroach pollination syndrome” is difficult. One commonality is that flowers are often visited by insects other than cockroaches, such as beetles, that vary in their significance as pollinators. Cockroach pollination is undoubtedly more widespread than previously thought and requires further attention.

A change of career and development of this website

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Yesterday was my last day of employment at the University of Northampton, I have stepped down from my professorship to work independently. However I will be staying in touch as a Visiting Professor to complete some projects, supervise my remaining postgraduate researchers, and tidy up the last bits of our REF submission.

It’s been quite a journey over the last 25 years from Nene College > University College Northampton > University of Northampton. I’m proud to have played a part in its development and to have taught some great students along the way. I’ve also made some amazing friends and worked with incredible, talented colleagues. I will miss all of that, but it was time to move on.

So, what of the future? From today I am self-employed as a consultant scientist and writer, focusing on the conservation of pollinators and their plants in our rapidly changing world. No amount of pandemics, Brexits, and American elections can hide the fact that we are having a devastating effect on the nature we rely on to put food on our plates and air in our lungs. The rest of my career is going to be focused on working with individuals and organisations to help to reduce our impact and restore nature.

My philosophy for this is to use the science that I have spent more than 30 years researching and developing, and apply it to the conservation of pollinators and their interactions with plants. At the same time I will continue to take a pragmatic and down to earth approach to thinking about the science that I publish from the perspective of the knowledge and understanding that conservation professionals require to do their work. Some of this is detailed in my book Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society (which I hope will be in the shops before Christmas!) but by no means all of it.

Over the next couple of weeks the format of this website will change as I develop it to become more of a shop window for the work I do and the services that I offer. Watch this space!

Recipe: Jeff’s salt-fermented sloes

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2025 UPDATE: After a couple of years of experimentation I’ve decided that 5% salt is about right. Anything less than about 4% leads to some alcoholic off flavours, and anything more than 6% is salty overkill.

It has been an exceptional year for wild fruit of all kinds and British hedgerows are painted crimson by hawthorn berries, with splashes of purple-black where the sloes hang in succulent bunches. Sloes are, of course, the fruit of the blackthorn tree (Prunus spinosa) and are perfectly edible. In fact blackthorn is one of the progenitor species for cultivated plums. In Britain we tend to associate sloes with sloe gin. But, if you follow this link, you’ll see that there are lots of other edible uses for the fruit. However sloes are notoriously astringent so they need to be processed in some way before they are palatable.

The mention of umeboshi plums in that section of the Wikipedia article got me thinking because it chimes with things that I have been reading in the new book Fermentation by Rachel de Thample. As I mentioned in this post on sourdough bread from a couple of years ago, I have a longstanding interest in fermented foods and drink that goes back to my time working in a brewery in my home town of Sunderland.

Fermentation talks a lot about lacto-fermentation in which salt is used to prevent the growth of “bad” fungi and bacteria and promote the growth of Lactobacillus. These “good” bacteria then ferment the sugars in fruit and vegetables, releasing lactic acid and increasing the edibility and digestibility of the foodstuffs. Sauerkraut is a good example of this process in action. As well as salt you have to exclude air to make the process at least partially anaerobic.

After a bit of reading I experimented with a basic recipe to lacto-ferment sloes to turn them into something resembling the flavoursome wonders that are umeboshi plums. And do you know, it worked! Lacto-fermenting the sloes transforms their flavour from mouth-puckeringly astringent to sour-and-salty.

Here’s the procedure:

Pick your sloes before they are frosted, discarding any that are shriveled or have been damaged by insects or fungi. Immediately wash them to get rid of any dust and rescue the spiders and other invertebrates that are bound to be flushed off! Put the sloes to one side.

Wash and rinse a glass jar with a tight fitting lid, which is equal to the capacity of the sloes but no more, i.e. you want the sloes to fill it to the top. Sterilisation shouldn’t be necessary as the conditions inside will not be suitable for growth of anything other than the Lactobacillus. But it’s best to rinse out any detergent.

Weigh the sloes and then weigh enough fine sea or rock salt to equal 8% of the weight of the sloes. In other words, for every 100 grams of sloes, you need 8 grams of salt*. Don’t use standard table salt as it usually contains chemicals of various kinds.

Add about a quarter of the sloes to the jar and then sprinkle in a quarter of the salt, put the lid on and invert it a couple of times to distribute the salt. Add another quarter of sloes and salt and invert again. Repeat until you have filled the jar with sloes and salt.

Put the lid on tightly, write the date on the jar or on a label, and put in a cupboard or shelf away from direct light. It’s best to stand the jar on a plate to catch any of the liquor that may come out of the fruit.

Invert the jar a couple of times once a day to keep the salt distributed over the sloes. After a few days a purple liquid will start to build up. This is the water from the sloes being drawn out by osmosis. After four or five days open the jar and try one or two sloes. If you like the flavour, put the jar in the fridge to stop the fermentation. Otherwise let them ferment until the flavour suits you.

At the moment I am just snacking on these sloes but I am sure they could be used in recipes that require a salty-sour note. The liquor that builds up in the jar could also be used to flavour dishes or as the basis for a salad dressing.

*8% salt was based on something that I read which I can’t now find and might be overkill. I am going to try it with 2% to 4% salt and see if that works.

Himalayan pollinators talk by Alan Moss now available to view on YouTube

Seasonal blog post views are a widespread phenomenon: a response to Leather (2020)

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In a recent study [that was never published] in Nature, Leather (2020) argued that “Time of year determines some, but not all, views of my blog posts“. An analysis of an independent data set confirms this observation: the blog post “How to deal with bumblebees in your roof” shows clear seasonal periodicity (see figure above) with peaks during the most active period of Tree Bumblebee nest activity in May and June.

In contrast, posts such as “How does a scientist’s h-index change over time?” show no such periodicity (see online Supplementary Information).

I conclude that Leather (2020) is correct in his assertion that insect-related posts such as these “show a correlation (OK, not tested) with the time of year associated with the appropriate part of the life cycle”. Furthermore, one of the research councils should give us a wodge of cash to explore this phenomenon in more detail*

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*Only slightly tongue-in-cheek – I think that Simon’s results and those above are telling us something quite interesting about the ways in which people engage with insects throughout the year. Check out Simon’s piece for a fuller discussion of the phenomenon.