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Insect pollinators initiative

Co-funders

• Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)
• Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
• Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
• The Scottish Government
• The Wellcome Trust

Under the auspices of the Living With Environmental Change (LWEC) partnership.

Funding total

Up to £10M over 5 years.

Number of projects we funded

9

See PDFs below for more information:

• Sustainable pollination services for UK crops (PDF 238KB)
         Dr Koos Biesmeijer, University of Leeds
• Modelling systems for managing bee disease: the epidemiology of European foulbrood (PDF 251KB)
         Dr Giles Budge, Food & Environment Research Agency
• Investigating the impact of habitat structure on queen and worker bumblebees in the field (PDF 215KB)
         Dr Claire Carvell, NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology
• An investigation into the synergistic impact of sublethal exposure to industrial chemicals on the learning capacity and performance of bees (PDF 203KB)
         Dr Chris Connolly, University of Dundee
• Linking agriculture and land use change to pollinator populations (PDF 167KB)
         Professor Bill Kunin, University of Leeds
• Urban pollinators: their ecology and conservation (PDF 205KB)
         Professor Jane Memmott, University of Bristol
• Impact and mitigation of emergent diseases on major UK insect pollinators (PDF 159KB)
         Dr Robert Paxton, Queen's University of Belfast
• Unravelling the impact of the mite Varroa destructor on the interaction between the honeybee and its viruses (PDF 194KB)
         Dr Eugene Ryabov, The University of Warwick
• Can bees meet their nutritional needs in the current UK landscape? (PDF 196KB)
         Dr Geraldine Wright, Newcastle University

List of awards

Purpose

To promote innovative research aimed at understanding and mitigating the biological and environmental factors that adversely affect insect pollinators.

Key aims

• To provide an evidence base to inform the conservation of wild insect pollinators and to improve the husbandry of managed species, in order to avoid the potentially catastrophic loss of the ecosystem services they provide
• To provide a basis for reducing current declines and sustaining healthy and diverse populations of pollinating insects for the future

The initiative aligns with several of LWEC’s 6 strategic objectives, in particular, those concerned with the implications of:

• Environmental change for ecosystem services (Objective B)
• Food and water supply (Objective C)
• Plant, animal and human health (Objective D)

Peer review panel membership

Professor John Coggins - University of Glasgow (Chair)
Dr David Aston - BBKA
Professor Tim Benton - University of Leeds
Dr Peter Campbell - Syngenta
Professor Angela Douglas - Cornell University
Dr Jeff Pettis - USDA
Professor Ingemar Fries - Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Dr Jane Hill - The University of York
Professor Graham Medley - The University of Warwick
Professor Stuart Reynolds - University of Bath
Dr Susanna Sansone - EBI
Professor Robert Smith - University of Huddersfield (Retired)
Professor Mark Tatchell - Independent

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