Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/M010104/1
Spatial learning and pollination services in fragmented hetergeneous landscapes
Training Grant Award
- Lead Supervisor:
- Professor N Hempel de Ibarra, University of Exeter, Psychology
- Grant held at:
- University of Exeter, Psychology
- Science Area:
- Atmospheric
- Earth
- Freshwater
- Marine
- Terrestrial
- Overall Classification:
- Terrestrial
- ENRIs:
- Biodiversity
- Environmental Risks and Hazards
- Global Change
- Natural Resource Management
- Pollution and Waste
- Science Topics:
- Agricultural systems
- Biodiversity
- Managed landscapes
- Animal behaviour
- Foraging
- Learning
- Modelling behaviour
- Plant reproductive biology
- Pollination
- Abstract:
- Cross-pollination of crop and wild flowers requires that pollinators, such as bees, are able to move over variable distances in order to effectively distribute pollen. The primary interest of bees, however, is to collect efficiently sufficient food for themselves, their offspring or other colony members. This interest drives many of their foraging decisions when choosing among flowers and patches to visit. Nevertheless, the most challenging part of their life as adult foragers is to safely navigate in an ever-changing environment and to bring a surplus of food back to the nest in the shortest time possible. This is particularly critical when foragers have little experience or when food sources are highly variable in space and time, for example in wild-flower habitats. Navigation in bees is largely guided visually, based on sightings of the landscape and therefore easily influenced by salient or large landmarks. In heterogeneous fragmented landscapes with major landmark structures, navigation can significantly determine where and how bees forage, consequently affecting pollination services. In this project we will characterise how bee behaviour is influenced by salient landmarks through conducting field observations of foraging and spatial behaviour in bees in the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). The South Devon AONB contains excellent study sites for such investigations. It has many heterogeneous areas where small and diverse agricultural holdings are separated by wide large-sized high-hedges grown on earth banks, the traditional Devon hedges, which are very salient landmark structures. It is also a hotspot of biodiverse habitats many of which have been recently mapped out in the B(iodiversity)- Lines project which will connect them with corridors to conserve biodiversity and oppose the decline in bees, the major group of pollinators. We will explore how the bees' behaviour changes using experimental manipulations of landmarks and of the bees' spatial and foraging experience. This work will further help to integrate spatial factors into a recently developed predictive model of the distribution of pollination services by bees. The B-Lines project is led by the CASE partner, the South Devon AONB unit. The data collected in this project, scientific conclusions and outcomes of model testing will feed directly into the management of the AONB landscape. This will enable the assessment of the effectiveness of B-Line corridors as part of the management plan, but also to evaluate the effects of different hedge maintenance regimes on the pollination services provided by bees. Whilst informing current landscape and agricultural practice and policy, it further helps the AONB to develop its environmental management expertise through knowledge exchange with the academic community. The PhD student on this project will receive both multidisciplinary academic training in the behavioural and ecological sciences and non-academic training in landscape management with exposure to the development and implementation of environmental policies.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/M010104/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- DTG - directed
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Industrial CASE
This training grant award has a total value of £85,122
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| Total - Fees | Total - Student Stipend | Total - RTSG |
|---|---|---|
| £16,587 | £57,538 | £11,000 |
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