Category Archives: Wasps

The influence of floral traits on specialization and modularity of plant–pollinator networks in a biodiversity hotspot in the Peruvian Andes – Watts et al. (2016)

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Watts et al Figure 1

The second paper from the PhD thesis of my former student Dr Stella Watts has just been published in Annals of Botany – here’s a link to the journal’s website.  It summarises the major findings from her field work on plant-pollinator interactions in the high Andes of Peru:

Watts, S., Dormann, C.F., Martín González, A.M. & Ollerton, J. (2016) The influence of floral traits on specialization and modularity of plant–pollinator networks in a biodiversity hotspot in the Peruvian Andes.  Annals of Botany doi: 10.1093/aob/mcw114

This paper represents a major piece of research, including extensive field data collection over multiple sites in a challenging environment at altitude; state-of-the-art data analysis; and then summarising all of this into a single, digestible paper, with some great figures.  I’m very proud to have been part of it!

Here’s the abstract; please email me or Stella if you’d like a copy of the full PDF:

Background and Aims:  Modularity is a ubiquitous and important structural property of ecological networks which describes the relative strengths of sets of interacting species and gives insights into the dynamics of ecological communities. However, this has rarely been studied in species-rich, tropical plant–pollinator networks. Working in a biodiversity hotspot in the Peruvian Andes we assessed the structure of quantitative plant–pollinator networks in nine valleys, quantifying modularity among networks, defining the topological roles of species and the influence of floral traits on specialization.

Methods: A total of 90 transects were surveyed for plants and pollinators at different altitudes and across different life zones. Quantitative modularity (QuanBiMo) was used to detect modularity and six indices were used to quantify specialization.

Key Results:  All networks were highly structured, moderately specialized and significantly modular regardless of size. The strongest hubs were Baccharis plants, Apis mellifera, Bombus funebris and Diptera spp., which were the most ubiquitous and abundant species with the longest phenologies. Species strength showed a strong association with the modular structure of plant–pollinator networks. Hubs and connectors were the most centralized participants in the networks and were ranked highest (high generalization) when quantifying specialization with most indices. However, complementary specialization d’ quantified hubs and connectors as moderately specialized. Specialization and topological roles of species were remarkably constant across some sites, but highly variable in others. Networks were dominated by ecologically and functionally generalist plant species with open access flowers which are closely related taxonomically with similar morphology and rewards. Plants associated with hummingbirds had the highest level of complementary specialization and exclusivity in modules (functional specialists) and the longest corollas.

Conclusions: We have demonstrated that the topology of networks in this tropical montane environment was non-random and highly organized. Our findings underline that specialization indices convey different concepts of specialization and hence quantify different aspects, and that measuring specialization requires careful consideration of what defines a specialist.

Bees’ Needs week (9th to 17th July) #BeesNeeds

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Inula at Ravensthorpe 20160710_145426.png

In the current political turmoil around the Chilcot Enquiry, Brexit, leadership challenges and a change of Prime Minister you’d be forgiven for having missed the fact that 9th to 17th July 2016 has been designated “Bees’ Knees” week, as a follow on to the Pollinator Awareness Week of 2015.

Here’s the link to the Defra press release.

Unlike last year I’ve no specific plans to do any regular posts on the topic, but I will provide links to relevant items as and when I see them, starting with these two:

Why insects are declining globally, and why it matters.

Dave Goulson is trying to crowdfund a project to look at pesticides in plants from garden centres.

 

 

 

Silver Medal for the BES’s pollinator’s display at RHS Chelsea Flower Show!

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RHS Silver Medal

An early train to London yesterday got me to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in time for the gates opening at 8am.  I’d agreed to spend the day staffing the British Ecological Society’s Animal Attraction: The garden and beyond display, which deals with the relationships between plants and their pollinators – see my recent posts here and here.

The first thing I noticed as I approached the display was how impressive and well designed it looked, with some wonderful planting to complement the simple, bold scientific information.  The second thing I noticed was that we had won a Silver Medal!  The whole team was very pleased – it’s the third year that the BES has been represented at Chelsea, but the first time that it’s won a medal.  I’m proud to have made a small contribution to that by advising on the plants and the scientific content, but the main kudos goes to the BES’s staff and to the garden designer Emily Darby.

Over the course of a long day we talked to hundreds of visitors about the display, what it represented, and the different ways that flowers are adapted to their pollinators.  There was a huge amount of public interest and support, very gratifying to see.  Here’s some pictures from the day:

RHS display

RHS crowd

RHS crowd with fig

RHS Jeff

RHS display

 

Pollinators at RHS Chelsea Flower Show

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20160518_114732

Pollinators, as regular readers of this blog will know, are diverse and important, both ecologically and agriculturally.  But that diversity is declining and it’s an issue that deserves greater publicity and action.

To that end, for the past eight months I’ve been advising a team from the British Ecological Society (BES) on the content for a display at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show which is running all next week.  The display is called “Animal Attraction: The Garden and Beyond” – if you follow that link you’ll get a sense of what the display is all about, but in essence there are three key messages that the BES is trying to get across:

  • Celebrating the diversity of pollinators (not just bees!) both in the UK and globally.
  • Flowers have evolved many different ways of attracting and rewarding pollinators, leading to the fantastic diversity of floral form that gardeners appreciate.
  • Planting a diversity of flowers in your garden can only be a good thing for helping conserve pollinator populations.

As you can see from my wristband, I’ll be helping to staff the stand all day Tuesday 24th May, so if you’re at the show come and say hello and take a look at what the BES team has produced.

“Progress in pollination and pollinator research” meeting – University of Reading – 20th April

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Skipper on ragwort - cropped

There is to be a joint meeting of the Royal Entomological Society’s Insect Pollination and Insects & Sustainable Agriculture Special Interest Groups on “Progress in pollination and pollinator research” at the University of Reading, 20th April 2016.  Unfortunately I can’t make it (I have meetings at the university all that day and need to get myself organised before heading off to Tenerife for field work on the 22nd) but I thought I’d advertise what looks like a very interesting one day conference.

The programme for the meeting is below and registration is open.  Please register before the meeting via The Royal Entomological Society using the form which can be downloaded from the RES website:

http://www.royensoc.co.uk/content/joint-meeting-insect-pollination-sustainable-agriculture-special-interest-groups-20-april-20

The registration fee will be £20 and includes lunch and all refreshments.

Convenors are Mike Garratt (Insect Pollination SIG) and John Holland (Insects & Sustainable Agriculture SIG) so please contact them if you’d like further information.

Programme

9.30-9.55 – Registration & Coffee

9.55-10.00 – Welcome

10.00-10.20 – Ecological intensification, pollinator diversity, and crop yield gaps in small- and large-holdings (Lucas Garibaldi, Instituto de Investigaciones en Recursos Naturales, Agroecología y Desarrollo Rural, Argentina)

10.20-10.40 – Welfare impact of pollinator decline on the international trade (Nicola Gallai, Ecole Nationale de Formation Agronomique, France)

10.40-11.00 – Conserving one beneficial at the cost of another; does success in promoting pollinators risk farmers ignoring other beneficial insects? (Mark Ramsden, ADAS)

11.00-11.20 – Coffee break

11.20-11.40 – Quantification of the floral landscape in agro-ecosystems and its effect on bumblebee colonies (Ellen Rotheray, University of Sussex)

11.40-12.00 – How many Bumblebees can our landscapes support? Using bumblebee colony models as a conservation management tool in agricultural landscapes (Grace Twiston-Davies, University of Exeter)

12.00-12.20 – Are current agri-environment schemes providing appropriate resources to the wider farmland bee community? (Thomas Wood, University of Sussex)

Short presentations:

12.20-12.25 – Pollination studies in the QuESSA Project (John Holland, Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust)
12.25-12.30 – Pollinator initiatives and research at the Royal Horticultural Society (Andrew Salisbury, RHS Garden Wisley)

12.30-12.35 – Collating evidence on plant traits and ecosystem services to inform multifunctional field margin design (Claire Blowers, Harper Adams University)

12.35-12.40 – Rare bee species and agriculture (Steven Falk, Freelance Entomologist)

12.40-12.45 – Fenland ditch banks as pollinator refuges: Environmental variable influence on pollination service measurements (Hilary Conlan, Anglia Ruskin University)

12.45-12.50 – What’s for dinner? Investigating the foraging preferences of honeybees using pollen DNA metabarcoding (Natasha de Vere, National Botanic Garden of Wales)

12.50-13.00 – Questions

13.00-13.45 – Lunch

13.45-13.50 – The National Pollinator and Pollination Monitoring Framework (Claire Carvell, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology)

13.50-13.55 – Impacts of climate change on plant-pollinator interactions in agro-ecosystems (Ellen Moss, Newcastle University)

13.55-14.00 – Reproductive resilience through outcrossing: pollen movement by insects is more important when plants are under stress (Jake Bishop, University of Reading)

14.00-14.05 – DNA metabarcoding reveals pollen transport by Eristalis hoverflies in grasslands (Andrew Lucas, National Botanic Garden of Wales)

14.05-14.10 – Raspberry pollination (Anders Nielsen, University of Oslo)

14.10-14.15 – Interaction between pollinators and pesticide use in agricultural crops: An ecological-economical modeling approach in South West France (Giorgos Kleftodimos, University of Toulouse)

14.15-14.20 – Estimating the net economic consequences of losing pollination services: evaluating contributions from single protected areas (Fabrizia Ratto, University of Southampton)

14.20-14.30 – Questions

14.30-14.50 – Insect pollinators: utilisation of resources through space and time in an intensive grassland landscape (Lorna Cole, SRUC)

14.50-15.10 – Insecticides and pollinators – Are they really incompatible? (Lin Field, Rothamsted Research)

15.00-15.20 – Monitoring the effects of chronic, larval exposure to neonicotinoids on the solitary bee Osmia bicornis (Beth Nicholls, University of Sussex)

15.20-15.30 – Discussion and close of meeting

Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production: IPBES gains momentum

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Bee on apple blossom - 1st May 2015

The over-arching themes of this blog have been about understanding biodiversity; the science behind its study; why it’s important; how it contributes to human well being, (including both intangible and economic benefits); and how policy informed by science can support the conservation of species and ecosystems.  These are all issues that have a global perspective beyond the bounds of my home country (the United Kingdom), or even my continent (Europe) because species, ecosystems and the threats to them do not respect political borders.

Enter IPBES – the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (sometimes shortened to Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services).

IPBES is a United Nations body established in 2012 that in many ways is a parallel entity to the IPCC ( Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), bringing together scientists, policy makers and stakeholders, with a mission:

“to strengthen the science-policy interface for biodiversity and ecosystem services for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, long-term human well-being and sustainable development“

Which has got to be a good thing: science informing policy, what’s not to like?

The first output from IPBES will be a Thematic Assessment of Pollinators, Pollination and Food Production, and it’s just been discussed (today) at the 4th Plenary meeting of IPBES in Kuala Lumpur – here’s a link to the press release.

In the coming weeks I’ll talk more about IPBES and its Thematic Assessment (for which I acted as a reviewer), but for now I’ll just repeat some of the headline figures from the report:

  • 20,000 – Number of species of wild bees. There are also some species of butterflies, moths, wasps, beetles, birds, bats and other vertebrates that contribute to pollination.
  • 75% – Percentage of the world’s food crops that depend at least in part on pollination.
  • US$235 billion–US$577 billion – Annual value of global crops directly affected by pollinators.
  • 300% — Increase in volume of agricultural production dependent on animal pollination in the past 50 years.
  • Almost 90% — Percentage of wild flowering plants that depend to some extent on animal pollination*.
  • 1.6 million tonnes – Annual honey production from the western honeybee.
  • 16.5% — Percentage of vertebrate pollinators threatened with extinction globally.
  • +40% – Percentage of invertebrate pollinator species – particularly bees and butterflies – facing extinction.

 

*They are quoting a figure that I calculated, and very proud of it I am too 🙂

Protecting an ecosystem service: approaches to understanding and mitigating threats to wild insect pollinators

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Bee on apple blossom 2 - 1st May 2015Back in April 2015 I attended a two day meeting at Imperial College’s Silwood Park campus to discuss initial project ideas to address evidence gaps in the recent National Pollinator Strategy.  I mentioned the meeting in passing in a post at the time concerned with whether biodiversity scientists should also be campaigners, but didn’t say a lot about what conclusions we came to and what the next steps would be because at the time I was unclear on both of those counts: it was a very wide ranging meeting with a lot of participants coming at the question of pollinator conservation from different perspectives.  As well as academics there were representatives from the agrochemical industry, government research organisations, and  the National Farmers Union.

During summer 2015 one of the conveners of the meeting, Dr Richard Gill, herded cats organised colleagues, pulled together all of the text and ideas that were generated, and took on the task of seeing a summary of the meeting through from initial draft to publication.  It was a monumental effort, involving 27 authors and 86 manuscript pages, and Richard did a sterling job.  Entitled “Protecting an ecosystem service: approaches to understanding and mitigating threats to wild insect pollinators” it will appear as a chapter in the next volume of Advances in Ecological Research, which should be published later this month.

The abstract and contents for the chapter are below; if anyone wants a copy of the full chapter, please let me know.

Abstract

Insect pollination constitutes an ecosystem service of global importance, providing significant economic and aesthetic benefits as well as cultural value to human society, alongside vital ecological processes in terrestrial ecosystems. It is therefore important to understand how insect pollinator populations and communities respond to rapidly changing environments if we are to maintain healthy and effective pollinator services. This paper considers the importance of conserving pollinator diversity to maintain a suite of functional traits to provide a diverse set of pollinator services. We explore how we can better understand and mitigate the factors that threaten insect pollinator richness, placing our discussion within the context of populations in predominantly agricultural landscapes in addition to urban environments. We highlight a selection of important evidence gaps, with a number of complementary research steps that can be taken to better understand: i) the stability of pollinator communities in different landscapes in order to provide diverse pollinator services; ii) how we can study the drivers of population change to mitigate the effects and support stable sources of pollinator services; and, iii) how we can manage habitats in complex landscapes to support insect pollinators and provide sustainable pollinator services for the
future. We advocate a collaborative effort to gain higher quality abundance data to understand the stability of pollinator populations and predict future trends. In addition, for effective mitigation strategies to be adopted, researchers need to conduct rigorous field- testing of outcomes under different landscape settings, acknowledge the needs of end-users when developing research proposals and consider effective methods of knowledge transfer to ensure effective uptake of actions.

Contents
1. Importance of Insect Pollination
1.1 Providing an Ecosystem Service
1.2 Brief Introduction to Pollination Ecology and the Importance of Wild
Pollinators
2. Major Threats to the Pollination Service Provided by Insects
3. Steps in the Right Direction to Protect Insect Pollinator Services: Policy Actions
4. Understanding and Mitigating Specific Threats to Wild Insect Pollinators to Protect Pollinator Services
4.1 Understanding the Stability of Insect Pollinator Communities
4.2 Using Molecular Approaches to Monitor Insect Pollinators
4.3 How Do Parasites Shape Wild Insect Pollinator Populations?
4.4 Understanding Insect Pollinator Population Responses to Resource Availability
4.5 Engineering Flowering Field Margins as Habitats to Attract Insect Pollinators
4.6 How Might We Improve the Wider Countryside to Support Insect Pollinators
4.7 Insect Pollinators in Urban Areas
5. Considerations When Developing Future Research and Mitigation Strategies
Acknowledgements
Appendix
References

Pollinators seminar at the Houses of Parliament – 2nd December

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Skipper on ragwort - cropped

The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) has organised a “Pollinators Update” afternoon seminar in London on Wednesday 2nd December, to discuss recent developments in pollinator conservation research. I’ve been asked to give a 15 minute presentation on the pollinator extinctions research we published in Science last year.

The full programme will be:

 

  • 2.30pm Sarah Newton MP, Chair’s Welcome
  • 2.40pm Presentations
  • Professor Simon Potts (Professor of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) – Reading University
  • Professor Jeff Ollerton (Professor of Biodiversity) University of Northampton
  • Dr Claire Carvell – NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
  • Dr Richard Gill – Imperial College London
  • 3.40pm Discussion
  • 3.55pm Chair’s closing remarks
  • 4.00pm Refreshments

 

The seminar is free to attend but you need to book a place: see the POST website for details.

That “love wasps” article – this is how Friends of the Earth responded

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Clearly my quick post this morning got through to Friends of the Earth at some level (thanks to everyone who tweeted it).  Here’s what they have done to the article in response:

  • Removed the not-a-wasp photograph (good)
  • Added some text about other things that wasps pollinate (good) but left in the text about figs (bad)
  • Under the “garden pests” section they have add some text, as follows (bad):

The University of Northampton’s Dr Jeff Ollerton says: “Wasps are part of a whole ecological guild of scavenging animals that includes ants, various birds, etc, which plays a valuable role by removing vast amounts of waste organic material from our towns and cities every year.”

Huh?  What I said had nothing at all to do with eating pests.  Was that not clear when I talked about “waste organic material” rather than “pests”?

Incidentally, and for the record, I’ve had no contact from anyone at Friends of the Earth asking if it was ok to quote me, or check text, or anything.

So, not a complete success then.  Once again, feel free to tweet this at FoE

More poor quality information: Friends of the Earth’s “Love Wasps” campaign

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Despite some recent posts in that vein, I don’t want to turn this blog into just an outlet for my frustrations about the lack of science/evidence in otherwise well-meaning conservation initiatives.  However something caught my eye at the weekend that I feel I have to comment on.

Friends of the Earth has recently posted a very well-meaning piece about why we should stop hating wasps and learn to appreciate them.  I whole-heartedly support this: wasps are one of the least understood and most under-valued aspects of local biodiversity, and the article makes some very good points.

But there are also some aspects to the article that make me cringe and add a new layer of inaccuracy to a subject already flooded with crass statements such as “what use are wasps”:

  • The first photograph in the article does not show a wasp: it’s a syrphid fly, specifically a species that mimics wasps but is other wise harmless.  These flies do not sting or bite.
  • “Wasps pollinate figs” – yes they do, but fig pollinating “wasps” are tiny and only distantly related to the kinds of wasps you’re going to see in a British garden.  In any case they do not pollinate commercial edible figs: these wasps spend much of their life-cycle within the fig and who wants to eat a fig full of insects?
  • Having said that, the sorts of wasps the article is referring to ARE important pollinators of a whole range of plants, including some orchids, umbellifers, ivy, etc.  That’s not mentioned at all.
  • The piece misses out the fact that wasps are part of a whole ecological guild of scavenging animals that includes ants, various birds, etc., which plays a valuable role by removing vast amounts of waste organic material from our towns and cities every year.  They also perform a similar function in natural ecosystems.

What’s frustrating about Friends of the Earth’s article is that there are any number of individuals and organisations out there who would be happy to fact-check such a piece, including Buglife, BWARS, and a range of scientists and well-informed specialists in natural history.  Why doesn’t Friends of the Earth make use of them?

As I’ve said before I don’t use Twitter, so if anyone wishes to tweet this at Friends of the Earth, please go ahead.