Insect Pollinators (Impact case study)
Professor Bill Kunin, with colleague Professor J.C. Biesmeijer, have used mathematical techniques to compare diverse historical data sets on pollinator abundance over the last eight decades.
Many important agricultural crops, such as oilseed rape, berries, apples, pears and plums, are pollinated by insects. Insect pollinators are also vital for maintaining wildflower populations as well. The value of all crops pollinated by insects in the UK is in the region of £600m per year (Office National Statistics, 2010). While domesticated honeybees provide a substantial share of this pollination, recent evidence suggests that the majority of crop and wildflower pollination is performed by wild pollinators, mostly bees and hoverflies. However, there has been concern in recent years about the apparent declines in pollinator species and the effects this has on crop and food production and on wildflower pollination. Professor Bill Kunin, with colleague Professor J.C. Biesmeijer, have used mathematical techniques to compare diverse historical data sets on pollinator abundance over the last eight decades. The results of this work give a clear picture of the changes in pollinator abundance. Professor Kunin has also determined species richness of pollinators in the UK and EU, funded partly by the EU-STEP project (Status and Trends of European Pollinators), and has used these combined sources of information to inform policy makers and farmers about effective ways to manage farmland to preserve the diversity and numbers of insect pollinators. In addition, the work of the EU-STEP project has provided data for the International Union of Nature Conservation European Red list for bees, and enables identification of wild bee species that are at risk of extinction.
In 2014 the National Pollinators Strategy instructed Defra to set up an insect pollinator monitoring scheme entitled “Towards a national pollinator and pollination monitoring program (2014-16)”, and the contract to design this was awarded to Claire Carvell from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, with Bill Kunin working as one of the collaborators. A second contract was then awarded to undertake a pilot run of the monitoring network (“Establishing a UK Pollinator Monitoring and Research Partnership”, 2017-19).
There are a number of investments and grant schemes that have been made by the UK Government following the National Pollinator’s Strategy, which link to the research carried out by Professor Kunin and colleagues on wild pollinators. One of these is the Countryside Stewardship programme, a part of which is the wild pollinator and farm wildlife package, which is a grant scheme that farmers can apply to for funding to manage their land effectively to encourage pollinators. Professor Kunin’s work has also attracted international interest – for example it has been used to inform aspects of the United States Pollinator Health Task Force National Strategy to promote the health of honey bees and other pollinators (May 2015, The Whitehouse, Washington).