Tag Archives: Italy

Week-long Master’s course in Italy – March 2024 – on Pollination as an Ecosystem Service

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I’m excited to announce that in March 2024 I will teach a week-long, Master’s-level residential course entitled “Pollination as an Ecosystem Service” at the University of Pavia in Italy. It will be taught in English. Here’s a summary of the course and a brief description of the the syllabus, which is broadly accurate but subject to change as it develops:

POLLINATION AS AN ECOSYSTEM SERVICE

A 3 credit Master’s course for the University of Pavia

Overview

The pollination of crops by bees, flies, birds, bats and other animals, is an ecosystem service that increases crop yields and quality. This is valued at hundreds of billions of Euros each year to European and global agriculture. In addition, these same animals pollinate around 90% of the world’s wild plants which in turn provide us with ecosystem services such as wild food, flood alleviation, microclimate modification, and carbon capture.

In this course, students will explore pollination as an ecosystem service from its first principles and historical roots through to the latest research findings around the consequences of pollinator decline and climate change. The emphasis of the course is on the students learning by actively participating during classes. Each day has a particular theme and will be a mix of interactive lectures, short video clips to illustrate particular points, discussion seminars (for which they will be expected to do some guided reading) and local excursions.

At the end of the course the students will have a developed a deep understanding of the diversity of pollinators, the ecological nature of their interactions with flowers, and the importance of these relationships to nature and to society.  

Assessment

            At the end of the course, the students will be asked to give a 10 minute presentation based on one of the topics covered in the course, and posed as a question such as “What is….?”, “Why does….?”, “What would happen if….?”, and so forth. The questions will be agreed with me in advance. Presentations will take place on the final day of the course and at the end of each presentation the students will have 5 minutes to answer questions posed by their peers and myself.

Syllabus

Day 1

Theme: Pollinators and pollination – first principles; including historical perspectives, the diversity of pollinators and flowers, and the biology of pollination. Introducing the course assessment.

Excursion: a walk around the local area to observe flowers and pollinators in action.

Day 2

Theme: Pollination as an ecosystem service; including the types of crops that are animal pollinated, how we calculate the value of pollination, and going beyond agriculture to look at the other ecosystem services provided by pollinators; approaches to studying pollinators and pollination.

Day 3

Theme: Pollinator conservation: including reasons for pollinator decline, impacts of climate change, the “politics of pollination”, the consequences of that decline for crop and wild plant pollination, how we can manage and restore habitats for pollinators.

Day 4

Theme: Urban pollinators: understanding the importance of pollinators in an urban setting and in gardens, and how towns and cities support pollinators. Excursion: How is the city of Pavia supporting pollinator populations and what could be improved?

Day 5

Theme: Summing up what we’ve learned, followed by assessed student presentations.

The course is open to all and there’s details of how to apply (in Italian and English) in the following link: https://portale.unipv.it/it/didattica/corsi-di-laurea/ammissioni/casi-particolari-di-iscrizione/iscriversi-ai-corsi-singoli

The brochure with all available courses can be downloaded here: http://news.unipv.it/?p=84031

I’d be very happy to talk with other universities who might be interested in running such a course.

If you have any questions, please use my Contact page to get in touch.

Plant-pollinator networks, the time dimension, and conservation: a new study just published

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Biella network

After rather a long gestation period, involving much re-analysis and rewriting, we’ve finally published Paolo Biella’s research from his Master’s thesis.  It’s a really neat plant-pollinator network study from mid-elevation grasslands in Italy’s Northern Apennine.  In it we have considered the way in which such networks could be analysed in relation to plant phenology (i.e. the timing of when they flower) rather than arbitrary time slices (e.g. months, weeks).  We have also discussed how this approach may inform conservation strategies in grasslands such as these.  The full citation with a link is:

Biella, P., Ollerton, J., Barcella, M. & Assini, S. (2017) Network analysis of phenological units to detect important species in plant-pollinator assemblages: can it inform conservation strategies?  Community Ecology 18: 1-10 

I’m happy to send a PDF to anyone who is interested in seeing the full study.

Here’s the abstract:

Conservation of species is often focused either only on those that are endangered, or on maximising the number recorded on species lists. However, species share space and time with others, thus interacting and building frameworks of relationships that can be unravelled by community-level network analysis. It is these relationships that ultimately drive ecosystem function via the transfer of energy and nutrients. However interactions are rarely considered in conservation planning. Network analysis can be used to detect key species (“hubs”) that play an important role in cohesiveness of networks. We applied this approach to plant-pollinator communities on two montane Northern Apennine grasslands, paying special attention to the modules and the identity of hubs. We performed season-wide sampling and then focused the network analyses on time units consistent with plant phenology. After testing for significance of modules, only some modules were found to be significantly segregated from others. Thus, networks were organized around a structured core of modules with a set of companion species that were not organized into compartments. Using a network approach we obtained a list of important plant and pollinator species, including three Network Hubs of utmost importance, and other hubs of particular biogeographical interest. By having a lot of links and high partner diversity, hubs should convey stability to networks. Due to their role in the networks, taking into account such key species when considering the management of sites could help to preserve the greatest number of interactions and thus support many other species.