Category Archives: Biogeography

New study just published: The effect of elevation, latitude, and plant richness on robustness of pollination networks at a global scale

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During the 2020 lockdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, I coordinated an international network of pollination ecologists who used standardised methods to collect data in their gardens. I blogged about it at the time – see here and here for instance – and also put up a post when the data paper from that work was published.

Several research groups are now working with that huge data set and interrogating it for answers to a wide range of questions. The first group to actually publish a paper from the data is a largely Chinese set of researchers from the Key Laboratory of Plant Resources, Conservation and Sustainable Utilization, at the South China Botanical Garden in Guangzhou, assisted by Kit Prendergast and myself.

In this paper we’ve considered how robust these plant-pollinator networks are to simulated extinctions of species, and how this is affected by the elevation, latitude, and plant species diversity of the network.

Here’s the full reference with a link to the study:

Wang, X.-P., Ollerton, J., Prendergast, K.S., Cai, J.-C., Tong, M.-Y., Shi, M.-M., Zhao, Z.-T., Li, S.-J. & Tu, T.-Y. (2024) The effect of elevation, latitude, and plant richness on robustness of pollination networks at a global scale. Arthropod-Plant Interactions (in press) https://doi.org/10.1007/s11829-024-10056-7

If you can’t access it and need a PDF, please send me a request via my Contact page.

Here’s the abstract:

Plant-pollinator interactions play a vital role in the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem function. Geographical variation in environmental factors can influence the diversity of pollinators and thus, affect the structure of pollination networks. Given the current global climate change, understanding the variation of pollination network structure along environmental gradients is vital to predict how global change will affect the ecological interaction processes. Here, we used a global plant-pollinator interaction data collection by the same sampling method at the same period to explore the effects of elevation, latitude, and plant richness on the structure and robustness of pollination networks. We analyzed a total of 87 networks of plant-pollinator interactions on 47 sites from 14 countries. We conducted a piecewise structural equation model to examine the direct and indirect effects of elevation, latitude, and plant richness on the network robustness and analyzed the function of network structure in elucidating the relationship between robustness and these gradients. We found that plant richness had both positive effects on robustness under random and specialist-first scenarios. Elevation, latitude, and plant richness affected network connectance and modularity, and ultimately affected network robustness which were mediated by nestedness under specialist-first and random scenarios, and by connectance under the generalist-first scenario. This study reveals the indirect effects of elevation, latitude, and plant richness on pollination network robustness were mediated by nestedness or connectance depended on the order of species extinctions, implying that communities with different pollination network structures can resist different extinction scenarios.

“Enemy release” of invasive plants is unpredictable – a new study just published

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The summer of 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic turned the world on its head, feels like a very long time ago. Early in that summer, as I recounted on this blog, Zoe Xirocostas joined my research group for a while in order to collect data for her PhD on the comparative ecologies of plants that are native to Europe but invasive in Australia. That work has proven to be very successful, and the latest paper from Zoe’s PhD has just been published.

The paper focuses on the “enemy release hypothesis” (ERH), a well-studied concept in invasion ecology that nonetheless generates significant debate and disagreement. In essence, the ERH posits that the reason why so many species become invasive is that they leave their consumers, pathogens and parasites behind when they move to a new locality. Those “enemies” would normally reduce the fecundity of the invader, putting a brake on their population growth. But in their absence, the invader can become far more successful. Of course, as well as leaving “enemies” behind the invader also loses its “friends”, such as pollinators, seed dispersers, and defensive or nutritional partners. This “Missed Mutualist Hypothesis” is something that I’ve recently explored with Angela Moles, who was Zoe’s main supervisor, and other collaborators in Australia. Expect to hear more about this from Zoe’s work in the near future.

But back to the enemies. Drawing on the most extensive set of standardised comparisons yet collected of the same plants in native and invasive habitats, Zoe found that plants in the invasive populations suffer on average seven times less damage from insect herbivores, as predicted by the (ERH). Rather remarkably, however, the amount of enemy release enjoyed by a plant species was not explained by how long the species had been present in the new range, the extent of that range, or factors such as the temperature, precipitation, humidity and elevation experienced by the native versus invasive populations.

In other words, it’s extremely hard to predict the extent of enemy release based on historical and ecological considerations that one might expect to impose a strong influence.

The study has just appeared in Proceedings of the Royal Society series B and is open access. Here’s the reference with a link to the paper:

Xirocostas, Z.A., Ollerton, J., Tamme, R., Peco, B., Lesieur, V., Slavich, E., Junker, R.R., Pärtel, M., Raghu, S., Uesugi, A., Bonser, S.P., Chiarenza, G.M., Hovenden M.J. & Moles, A.T. (2023) The great escape: patterns of enemy release are not explained by time, space or climate. Proceedings of the Royal Society series B 290: 20231022.

Here’s the abstract:

When a plant is introduced to a new ecosystem it may escape from some of its coevolved herbivores. Reduced herbivore damage, and the ability of introduced plants to allocate resources from defence to growth and reproduction can increase the success of introduced species. This mechanism is known as enemy release and is known to occur in some species and situations, but not in others. Understanding the conditions under which enemy release is most likely to occur is important, as this will help us to identify which species and habitats may be most at risk of invasion. We compared in situ measurements of herbivory on 16 plant species at 12 locations within their native European and introduced Australian ranges to quantify their level of enemy release and understand the relationship between enemy release and time, space and climate. Overall, plants experienced approximately seven times more herbivore damage in their native range than in their introduced range. We found no evidence that enemy release was related to time since introduction, introduced range size, temperature, precipitation, humidity or elevation. From here, we can explore whether traits, such as leaf defences or phylogenetic relatedness to neighbouring plants, are stronger indicators of enemy release across species.

Soybean is more dependent on bee pollination in the tropics – a new study just published

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It’s been an interesting start to the year in the world of pollinators and pollination. The European Union has revised its 2018 initiative for pollinator conservation with an update called “A New Deal for Pollinators“. At the same time the UK Government has released its plans for Post-Brexit farm subsidies, many of which focus on environmental action that can support pollinators, such as planting hedgerows. I think that it’s fair to say that there’s been a mixed response to these planned subsidies. There’s also mixed news in Butterfly Conservation’s State of the UK’s Butterflies 2022 report. The headline figure is that 80% of butterflies in the UK have decreased since the 1970s. However there are enough positive conservation stories in that report to demonstrate that this decline does not have to be irreversible, we can turn things around.

Against this wider backdrop of pollinator actions, I was pleased to have a new research paper published this week, which is an output from the SURPASS2 project with which I’ve been involved. Led by Brazilian researcher Nicolay Leme da Cunha, this paper assess the variability of soybean dependence on pollinators. Although soybean is one of the most widely grown crops globally, there’s still much that we don’t understand about which of the many different varieties have improved yields when visited by bees, and which are purely self-pollinating. One of our main findings was that for some varieties, especially in the tropics, an absence of pollinators results in a decline in yield of about 50%.

The paper is open access and you can download a copy by following the link in the reference:

da Cunha, N.L, Chacoff, N.P., Sáez, A., Schmucki, R., Galetto, L., Devoto, M., Carrasco, J., Mazzei, M.P., Castillo, S.E., Palacios, T.P., Vesprini, J.L., Agostini, K., Saraiva, A.M., Woodcock, B.A., Ollerton, J. & Aizen, M.A. (2023) Soybean dependence on biotic pollination decreases with latitude. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 347, 108376

Here’s the abstract:

Identifying large-scale patterns of variation in pollinator dependence (PD) in crops is important from both basic and applied perspectives. Evidence from wild plants indicates that this variation can be structured latitudinally. Individuals from populations at high latitudes may be more selfed and less dependent on pollinators due to higher environmental instability and overall lower temperatures, environmental conditions that may affect pollinator availability. However, whether this pattern is similarly present in crops remains unknown. Soybean (Glycine max), one of the most important crops globally, is partially self-pollinated and autogamous, exhibiting large variation in the extent of PD (from a 0 to ∼50% decrease in yield in the absence of animal pollination). We examined latitudinal variation in soybean’s PD using data from 28 independent studies distributed along a wide latitudinal gradient (4–43 degrees). We estimated PD by comparing yields between open-pollinated and pollinator-excluded plants. In the absence of pollinators, soybean yield was found to decrease by an average of ∼30%. However, PD decreases abruptly at high latitudes, suggesting a relative increase in autogamous seed production. Pollinator supplementation does not seem to increase seed production at any latitude. We propose that latitudinal variation in PD in soybean may be driven by temperature and photoperiod affecting the expression of cleistogamy and androsterility. Therefore, an adaptive mating response to an unpredictable pollinator environment apparently common in wild plants can also be imprinted in highly domesticated and genetically-modified crops

When organisms lose their friends: a new review of the “Missed Mutualist Hypothesis” just published

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All organisms – be they plants, animals, fungi, or whatever – interact with other species throughout their lives, in relationships that include predation, parasitism, commensalism, and the many and varied forms of mutualism. But when species are transported to a different part of the world, as has happened often during the Anthropocene, these interactions typically break down because usually only one of the participants moves. This loss of ecological relationships can play a role in whether or not a species becomes established in its new home, and has been mostly explored in the “Enemy Release Hypothesis” (ERH) which predicts that, by leaving behind predators or parasites or herbivores, a species becomes more ecologically successful and ultimately invasive in its novel range.

Less well studied, though potentially just as important, is the “Missed Mutualist Hypothesis” (MMH) which in a sense is the twin of the ERH. As well as leaving behind “enemies”, introduced species leave behind “friends” such as pollinators, seed dispersers, mycorrhizal fungi, defensive partners, and other mutually beneficial associates. Negative effects arising from the loss of these relationships could potentially balance the positive impacts arising from the ERH.

In a new quantitative review just published, we review what’s known about the MMH (currently much less than the ERH) and suggest some fruitful lines of enquiry. The study is led by Angela Moles, my collaborator at the University of New South Wales where I spent time as a Visiting Research Fellow in 2019/20 (see my blog posts about that visit starting here). The paper has had a long gestation and gone through several iterations and revisions since we started writing it in late 2019, not least caused by the covid pandemic, but I think that it’s all the better for it.

Here’s the full reference with a link to the paper:

Moles, A.T., Dalrymple, R.L., Raghu, S., Bonser, S.P. & Ollerton, J. (2022) Advancing the missed mutualist hypothesis, the under-appreciated twin of the enemy release hypothesis. Biology Letters 18: 20220220.

Here’s the abstract:

Introduced species often benefit from escaping their enemies when they are transported to a new range, an idea commonly expressed as the enemy release hypothesis. However, species might shed mutualists as well as enemies when they colonize a new range. Loss of mutualists might reduce the success of introduced populations, or even cause failure to establish. We provide the first quantitative synthesis testing this natural but often overlooked parallel of the enemy release hypothesis, which is known as the missed mutualist hypothesis.

Meta-analysis showed that plants interact with 1.9 times more mutualist species, and have 2.3 times more interactions with mutualists per unit time in their native range than in their introduced range. Species may mitigate the negative effects of missed mutualists. For instance, selection arising from missed mutualists could cause introduced species to evolve either to facilitate interactions with a new
suite of species or to exist without mutualisms. Just as enemy release can allow introduced populations to redirect energy from defence to growth, potentially evolving increased competitive ability, species that shift to strategies without mutualists may be able to reallocate energy from mutualism toward increased competitive ability or seed production. The missed mutualist hypothesis advances understanding of the selective forces and filters that act on plant species in the early stages of introduction and establishment and thus could inform the management of introduced species.

Are cactus pollination systems more specialised in the tropics? A new study suggests yes…and no!

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The question of whether interactions between different species are more specialised in tropical environments (as theory predicts) has intrigued me for a couple of decades. In fact it’s just occurred to me that August 2022 was the 20th anniversary of my paper in Oikos co-authored with Louise Cranmer entitled: Latitudinal trends in plant-pollinator interactions: are tropical plants more specialised? That paper was one of the first to seriously challenge an idea that was long-embedded in the scientific and (especially) popular literature, that tropical ecology was in a sense “special” and that the ways in which species parasitised, consumed, or engaged in mutualistic relationships in the tropics was different to what was happening in the subtropics and temperate zones.

Since then I’ve written about this subject in a number of publications, most recently in my book Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society and it’s inspired some other researchers to address the topic.

One of the real challenges with asking questions about how plant-pollinator relationships change over large geographical areas is obtaining good, robust data to analyse. It’s a challenge to convince science funding agencies to give money to spend many years travelling the world and collecting the kind of data that are needed. However we can gain some idea of the patterns, and potential processes, that drive the macroecology of plant-pollinator interactions by piecing together databases of interactions for particular taxa, gleaned from published and unpublished sources.

That’s what we have done for the family Cactaceae in a new study led by Pablo Gorostiague from the Universidad Nacional de Salta in Argentina. This collaboration started when Pablo visited Northampton back in 2018 and spent some time with my research group, including helping out with field work in Tenerife. Since then the usual issues (work, COVID, etc.) have delayed publication of our paper, but now it’s finally out. Amongst other results we find that, yes, tropical cacti are pollinated by fewer species on average (though it’s hugely variable – see the figure above) but that functional specialisation (i.e. the number of pollinator guilds that are used by species) is no different in the tropics compared to the extra-tropics (that’s the figure at the end of this post).

The full reference with a link to the paper is below; if anyone wants a PDF, please send me a message via the Contact page:

Gorostiague, P., Ollerton, J. and Ortega-Baes, P. (2022) Latitudinal gradients in biotic interactions: Are cacti pollination systems more specialized in the tropics? Plant Biology https://doi.org/10.1111/plb.13450

Here’s the abstract:

Biotic interactions are said to be more specialized in the tropics, and this was also proposed for the pollination systems of columnar cacti from North America. However, this has not yet been tested for a wider set of cactus species. Here, we use the available information about pollination in the Cactaceae to explore the geographic patterns of this mutualistic interaction, and test if there is a latitudinal gradient in its degree of specialization.

We performed a bibliographic search of all publications on the pollination of cacti species and summarized the information to build a database. We used generalized linear models to evaluate if the degree of specialization in cacti pollination systems is affected by latitude, using two different measures: the number of pollinator guilds (functional specialization) and the number of pollinator species (ecological specialization).

Our database contained information about the pollination of 148 species. The most frequent pollinator guilds were bees, birds, moths and bats. There was no apparent effect of latitude on the number of guilds that pollinate a cactus species. However, latitude had a small but significant effect on the number of pollinator species that service a given cactus species.

Bees are found as pollinators of most cactus species, along a wide latitudinal gradient. Bat and bird pollination is more common in the tropics than in the extra-tropics. The available information suggests that cacti pollination systems are slightly more ecologically specialized in the tropics, but it does not support any trend with regard to functional specialization.

Pollinator-flower interactions in gardens during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown of 2020: the data paper has just been published!

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During the lockdown period of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, many pollination ecologists were stuck at home: universities and research institutes were closed and restrictions on travel meant that it was not possible to get out and do field work. In order to keep active and motivated, and to turn adversity into an opportunity, an ad hoc network of more than 70 researchers from 15 different countries (see the map above) decided to collect standardised data on the plant-pollinator networks in their own gardens and nearby public spaces.

When combined with information about location, size of garden, floral diversity, how the garden is managed, and so forth, this would provide some useful data about how gardens support pollinators. For those with kids at home it could also be a good way of getting them out into fresh air and giving them something to do!

Following discussions, several different protocols were instigated which depended upon the time available to the researchers, including one that mirrored the UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme’s  FIT (Flower-Insect Timed) counts.

The resulting data set of almost 47,000 visits by insects and birds to flowers, as well as information about flowers that were never visited, is freely available and will be an invaluable resource for pollination ecologists. For example, analysing the links between ornamental flowers that share pollinators with fruits and vegetables such as apples and beans, will allow us to make recommendations for the best plants to grow in home gardens that can increase yields of crops.  

There’s an old saying about turning adversity into a positive outcome: “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”, and the researchers were pleased to find that there’s one record of Citrus limon in the data set!

The paper describing the data set has just been published in the Journal of Pollination Ecology and you can download a PDF of the paper and the associated data for free by following this link.

Sincere thanks to all of my co-authors for their commitment to the project!

Tracking trends in Neotropical pollinators: how good is our understanding and is more data always better?

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In my recent book Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society I discussed the current state of our knowledge of how populations of pollinators have changed over time. Although we have some quite detailed data for particular, often charismatic, species or for certain geographic localities or regions, for most species we know almost nothing. As I wrote in the chapter “The shifting fates of pollinators”:

“For most pollinators we are ‘data deficient’, in other words, we don’t know how their populations are performing. They could be doing well, but they may not be”

This is particularly true for those regions for the world that hold the greatest terrestrial biodiversity: the tropics. For the vast majority of species in the tropics we know precious little about trends in their populations and how their distributions have changed over time in the face of wide-scale land transformation and recent climatic shifts. Filling in some of the gaps in our knowledge of Neotropical pollinator distributions is one of its aims of SURPASS2, a collaboration between South American and UK ecologists, and one of several research and outreach projects with which I’m involved.

In a new study that’s come out of that work, led by Rob Boyd from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, we’ve used the GBIF database to look at the changing distributions of four important groups of pollinators: bees, hoverflies, leaf-nosed bats and hummingbirds. In particular we were interested in understanding the kinds of biases that come with such publicly available data, and whether recent efforts to add data to GBIF has improved our understanding of trends.

Our overall conclusion is that there are significant limitations and biases inherent in all of these data sets even for groups like hummingbirds which one would imagine are well documented by scientists and bird-watching naturalists. In addition, having more data does not necessarily help matters: it can introduce its own biases.

The paper is open access and feely available; here’s the reference with a link:

Boyd, R. J., Aizen, M.A., Barahona-Segovia, R.M., Flores-Prado, L., Fontúrbel, F.E., Francoy, T.M., Lopez-Aliste, M., Martinez, L., Morales, C.L., Ollerton, J., Pescott, O.L., Powney, G.D., Saraiva, A.M., Schmucki, R., Zattara, E.E., & Carvell, C. (2022) Inferring trends in pollinator distributions across the Neotropics from publicly available data remains challenging despite mobilization efforts. Diversity and Distributions (in press)

Here’s the abstract:

Aim
Aggregated species occurrence data are increasingly accessible through public databases for the analysis of temporal trends in the geographic distributions of species. However, biases in these data present challenges for statistical inference. We assessed potential biases in data available through GBIF on the occurrences of four flower-visiting taxa: bees (Anthophila), hoverflies (Syrphidae), leaf-nosed bats (Phyllostomidae) and hummingbirds (Trochilidae). We also assessed whether and to what extent data mobilization efforts improved our ability to estimate trends in species’ distributions.

Location
The Neotropics.

Methods
We used five data-driven heuristics to screen the data for potential geographic, temporal and taxonomic biases. We began with a continental-scale assessment of the data for all four taxa. We then identified two recent data mobilization efforts (2021) that drastically increased the quantity of records of bees collected in Chile available through GBIF. We compared the dataset before and after the addition of these new records in terms of their biases and estimated trends in species’ distributions.

Results
We found evidence of potential sampling biases for all taxa. The addition of newly-mobilized records of bees in Chile decreased some biases but introduced others. Despite increasing the quantity of data for bees in Chile sixfold, estimates of trends in species’ distributions derived using the postmobilization dataset were broadly similar to what would have been estimated before their introduction, albeit more precise.

Main conclusions
Our results highlight the challenges associated with drawing robust inferences about trends in species’ distributions using publicly available data. Mobilizing historic records will not always enable trend estimation because more data do not necessarily equal less bias. Analysts should carefully assess their data before conducting analyses: this might enable the estimation of more robust trends and help to identify strategies for effective data mobilization. Our study also reinforces the need for targeted monitoring of pollinators worldwide.

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SURPASS2 has been a hugely productive project as you’ll see if you look at the Publications page of the website. There’s much more to come and I’ll report on those research papers as they appear.

Wild mushrooms, tragic deaths, and the importance of understanding nature

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A sad and timely news story caught our eye this morning: the death of two young Afghan boys in Poland who were poisoned after their family collected wild mushrooms to make a soup. Other members of the family were hospitalised. As Karin read out the story to me, I was moved by the tragedy of these events for a family fleeing a war zone, but also angered by pointlessness of the loss of those brothers’ lives, just more death-by-wild-mushroom statistics. In Europe we read about such events every year in the autumn, the peak of wild fungus foraging. And quite often the deaths are of people who have recently moved to an area and mistake poisonous mushrooms for edible ones from their country of origin.

At their root, these tragic stories of lost lives and broken families are stories of misunderstandings about nature. In particular, they are about not appreciating that plants, mushrooms, animals, and other wildlife, are not the same all over the world. There are biogeographic differences between regions that reflect the long-term history of life on our planet. Plants or mushrooms that look superficially similar in different parts of the world may have very different evolutionary histories. Histories that can make the difference between good to eat and deadly poisonous, between life and death.

The mushroom which killed the boys was a Death Cap (Amanita phalloides) which is found across Europe and the Mediterranean basin. As far as I can tell from its GBIF records, it does not occur in Afghanistan. The family presumably mistook this mushroom for one with which they were familiar, perhaps a different species of Amanita, which contains both deadly types and some that are good to eat. This terrible and fatal mix up could so easily have been avoided.

I’m not certain if resettlement agencies provide information about the foraging of wild food, or if basic facts about local nature are provided to those new to these areas. This is a simple action that could save lives and further tragedies for families trying to recover after the disruption of moving to a new country. It may be that this family was trying to carry on traditions of foraging in an effort to feel at home.

Since we arrived in the Odsherred region of Denmark, where Karin and I intend to settle, we have been exploring the woods and beaches on our newly bought bicycles. Much of the natural history is familiar to me from Britain, but there’s also some interesting differences and in future blog posts I’ll discuss this further. Last week we happened across a Lithuanian woman and her mother who had been foraging for mushrooms in the forest around their summer house. They were pushing a baby’s pram, the lower basket of which was stuffed with fungi. Picking and eating wild mushrooms has been something I’ve enjoyed since I was a teenager, so I had to stop and chat with them. They showed us some of their finds, including species with which I wasn’t familiar and that I will research further.

Lithuania and Denmark are of course quite close to each other geographically. Nonetheless the younger woman was still discovering which of the local mushrooms were good to eat: ‘I learn one new edible species each year’ she told us ‘That’s a good rule, then you don’t get confused’.

Since that meeting we’ve had several meals from mushrooms collected in the area, including some very fine ceps (Boletus edulus). I will keep in mind the woman’s words and proceed cautiously when it comes to discovering what is edible and what is not.

To end this rather sad but hopefully thought provoking post, Karin and I send our deepest condolences to the Afghan family and our heartfelt wishes that they can recover from these tragedies that must have deeply affected their lives.

Global effects of land-use intensity on pollinator biodiversity: a new study just published

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Humans affect the land on which they live in many different ways, and this in turn influences local biodiversity. Sometimes this has positive effects on local wildlife: consider the diversity of birds to be found in well-managed suburban gardens, for example. But often the effect is negative, especially when the land is intensively managed or habitats are destroyed, for example via deforestation or urban development.

This is not a new phenomenon – according to a recent study, most of the habitable parts of the planet have been shaped by humans for at least 12,000 years (see Ellis et al. 2021). What is new, however, is the scale and the speed with which land-use is changing, which are far greater than they have been historically. An important question is the extent to which this change in land-use intensity is affecting pollinator diversity in different parts of the world. Over the past 18 months I’ve been collaborating on a project led by Joe Millard (as part of his PhD) and Tim Newbold which uses the Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (PREDICTS) database to address that very question.

A paper from that collaboration is published today in the journal Nature Communications; it’s open access and can be downloaded by following this link.

The study was global in scale and used data from 12,170 sites to assess the affect of land-use intensity on 4502 pollinating species. The findings are really fascinating; highlights include:

  • In comparison to natural vegetation, low levels of land-use intensity can have a positive effect on the diversity of pollinators.
  • For most land categories, greater intensity of land-use results in significant reductions in diversity and abundance of pollinators, however. For example, for urban sites there’s a 43% drop in number of species and a drop in 62% pollinator abundance from the least to the most intensive urban sites.
  • On cropland, strong negative responses of pollinators to increasing intensity are only found in tropical areas, although different taxonomic groups vary in their responses.
  • The latter finding is especially concerning given that: (i) most pollinator diversity is found in the tropics; (ii) the majority of tropical crops are insect pollinated; and (3) tropical agriculture is becoming increasingly intensive and land use is likely to rapidly change in the coming decades.

The full reference for the study, with all authors, is:

Millard, J., Outhwaite, C.L., Kinnersley, R., Freeman, R., Gregory, R.D., Adedoja, O., Gavini, S., Kioko, E., Kuhlmann, M., Ollerton, J., Ren, Z.-X. & Newbold, T. (2021) Global effects of land-use intensity on local pollinator biodiversity. Nature Communications 12, 2902. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23228-3

Finally, a physical copy of my book!

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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.