Author: stoutj123

RestPoll: Restoring pollinator habitats across European agricultural landscapes

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Dr Sarah Larragy, post-doctoral researcher working on RestPoll, TCD.

We are making strides on our work as part of the Horizon Europe funded project called “RestPoll” (https://www.restpoll.eu). The name of our project, RestPoll, stands for “Restoring Pollinator habitats across European agricultural landscapes”. Among its 31 partners are both natural and social scientists from research institutions across Europe, alongside professionals from ministries, NGOs and businesses. Our partners represent 14 countries in Europe.

What is the goal of this project?

The mission of this project is to restore and increase connectivity between habitats for pollinators to help reverse the decline of these essential insects and the important pollinating services they provide. It also hopes to investigate co-benefits of pollinator restoration to various sectors of society as well as incentives and barriers (e.g. in policy) to pollinator restoration. In doing this, RestPoll will help fill the necessary knowledge gaps that will help to enable and support members of society to reverse pollinator decline.

How will we do it?

A core part of this project is to establish, in each participating partner country, case study areas that contain ‘living lab’ sites. With this network of living labs established, RestPoll will assess how actions taken to help restore pollinator habitats impact both pollinators and people alike.

What is a living lab? A living lab is a setting where “experiments, research, and innovation take place in real-life contexts, often involving end-users or stakeholders directly”.

Aligning with other Irish research:

RestPoll is aligned with, and part of, the Research Ireland-funded BiOrbic Bioeconomy Centre (https://biorbic.com/), specifically the Healthy Ecosystems Challenge. Healthy, functioning, biodiverse ecosystems underpin the bioeconomy, particularly in agricultural landscapes.

In addition, RestPoll is working with the FarmBioNet project https://farmbionet.eu/, which is a Farmer-focused Biodiversity and Agricultural Knowledge Network, which brings together stakeholders for researching, implementing and supporting Biodiversity Friendly Farming practices.

RestPoll Updates so far:

Establishing Irish Case Study Area:

Last summer, I began reaching out to farmers to see about monitoring pollinators on their farms. Many of the farmers had previously been involved in an EIP project called ‘Protecting Farmland Pollinators’ (NBDC, Project Manager Dr Saorla Kavanagh), and so were already taking actions to restore habitats for pollinators on their farms, including reduced hedgerow cutting, reduced pesticide use and having pollinator friendly trees, to name a few.

The summer involved many farm walks and chats over cups of tea with farmers to tell them more about the RestPoll project and, most importantly, to learn more about their perspectives on biodiversity conservation in agriculture. With the help of Research Assistant, Claire Kearney, and Erasmus+ student, Anna-Sonia Anastasiadou, a trial round of pollinator surveys was also carried out.

First Irish RestPoll Living Lab workshop:

In Sept 2024, we ran our first Living Lab workshop on a participating farm site in Athy. Among attendees were farmers, researchers and a representative from DAFM. Attendees received an overview of the RestPoll project and our plans and heard the reflections on the key successes of the Protecting Farmland Pollinators project from Dr Saorla Kavanagh, before delving into discussions around biodiversity conservation in agriculture. A farm walk also took place, led by our host Andrew Bergin, tillage farmer and Farming For Nature Ambassador. For a more detailed summary of this workshop and the discussions that took place, follow this link.

Watch this space…

This year, we will be conducting three rounds of pollinator and floral surveys on participating farms in the Co. Kildare region. Also on our pollinator monitoring team are PhD student Fernanda Azevedo and Moya Owens, research assistant working on the “Antenna” project. Over the summer, we also hope to trial out a rapid assessment tool with some farmers to help RestPoll develop an easy-to-use tool to quickly monitor pollinators. A second living lab workshop is also due to take place this Autumn, where we can update our Living Lab network on our progress.

For more information about RestPoll or if you are interested in getting involved, email Sarah at slarragy@tcd.ie.

Claire Kearney (L) and Anna-Sonia Anastasiadou (R) happy after a long day of pollinator surveys. August, 2024.  

Hiring researcher/project manager for pollinator monitoring project

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THIS POSITION HAS NOW BEEN FILLED!

A highly motivated individual is sought to join the multidisciplinary team of ANTENNA “Making technology work for monitoring pollinators”, a European Biodiversa consortium nationally funded by the Environmental Protection Agency. The successful applicant will be based in the School of Natural Sciences at Trinity College Dublin, with Professor Jane Stout, collaborating with partners across Europe.

About the project

Due to pollinators’ decline and their importance in food security and ecosystems, the EU Pollinators Initiative has prioritised the establishment of a comprehensive monitoring system (EU PoMS). Modern technologies like robotics and computer vision can improve pollinator monitoring coverage, speed, and accuracy. However, more research is needed to advance and adapt these technologies to determine the best, most cost-effective ways to use them for pollinator monitoring.

ANTENNA will assess stakeholder needs regarding usability, design, current limitations, and opportunities for improvement to enhance new monitoring methods. Based on this, we will improve methodologies whilst testing their effectiveness and complementarity alongside traditional sampling across various regions within and outside the EU. Additionally, we will create a roadmap for improving pollinator monitoring across Europe using these frameworks, data standards, and integration pipelines.

About the role

We seek an experienced individual to join the team for up to 2 years of the ANTENNA project. This person will be responsible for:

  1. Assessing stakeholder needs for novel pollinator monitoring technologies.
  2. Trialling novel technologies at our site network in Ireland.
  3. Providing a roadmap for novel pollinator monitoring technologies to be incorporated into European policy.
  4. Working with the wider project team to contribute to a cost-benefit analysis and refine methods.
  5. Project management, including reporting, data management, and managing relationships with project personnel and partners

Skills and qualifications required

Essential

  • Experience in biodiversity monitoring
  • Exceptional skills in the management of a multi-partner project, including arranging meetings, reporting, and interacting with researchers and a wide range of stakeholders (partners, taxonomic experts, funders, and decision-makers)
  • Excellent interpersonal and problem-solving skills
  • Excellent personal time management
  • Excellent data handling and presentation skills
  • Excellent report writing skills

Desirable

  • PhD in ecological/environmental sciences, entomology, biodiversity or similar
  • Experience with insect identification
  • Experience in successfully publishing scientific journal articles

Job specifications

Post status: Up to 24 month Specific Purpose Contract

The duration of this contract is limited to the above-fixed term so that the successful candidate can complete work on the ANTENNA project. This contract is, therefore, limited to a fixed term and is not being offered on a permanent basis, as the specific scope of responsibilities associated with this role aligns with the externally funded ANTENNA project timeline and deliverables and is expected to conclude within the period outlined.

Hours of Post: Full-time, 35 hours per week

Salary: This appointment will be made on the Research Assistant (€31,962 – €41,943 per annum) or Post-Doctoral Researcher Salary Scale (€43,908 – €44,496 per annum) at a point depending on experience, in line with current Irish Universities Association University Research Salary Scales/Guidelines.

How to apply

Applicants should submit a Curriculum Vitae and a Cover Letter that specifically addresses their relevant experience and outlines their suitability for the position, along with three referees’ names and contact details, to Jessica Knapp (KNAPPJ@tcd.ie). The position will remain open until filled.

Applicants not addressing the application requirements above will not be considered at the shortlist stage.

Pollinator scientists gather at Trinity

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Ireland’s pollinator research community came together this month to share their latest updates and research at the annual Irish Pollinator Research Network (IPRN) meeting. Researchers descended on the Botany building from Trinity, Maynooth University, UCD, Galway University, and Teagasc for the one-day meeting. Over the day, 15 talks were given, and a few of the highlights are presented below.

IPRN members at the 2024 meeting at Trinity College Dublin

IPRN 2024 agendaDownload

Interesting cross-disciplinary research was presented by Engineer Adam Narbudowicz (Senior Research Fellow at Trinity), whose team, funded by Trinity’s Kinsella E3 multidisciplinary scheme and working with Jane Stout and Cian White, has been developing a small radar sensor capable of distinguishing between several pollinator species. This generated much excitement at the thought of how many different uses a technology like this could have.

Adam Narbudowicz presents work on radar sensors

Tara Dirilgen (Assistant Professor at Maynooth) presented a fascinating talk on why bee scientists need to diversify their pesticide research. With a systematic review methodology, she, and a team at UCD, found that bee researchers had overly invested in studying just one species, honeybees and just one group of pesticides, neonicotinoids.

In contrast, the conference had no such biases. There was a wonderfully diverse set of talks including research on solitary bee nesting habits (Colm O’Leary, a PhD student at UCD and Teagasc), rare and cryptic bumblebees (Lydia Thompson and Ciara Shivnen, PhD and undergraduate students at UCD), and cocoa pollination in Ghana (Richard Boakye, recent PhD student at UCD).

Richard Boakye presents his work from his PhD on implications of cocoa expansion in Ghana

Kate Harrington (PhD student at Trinity) presented some of the preliminary results from her survey of pollinators in newly planted Irish woodlands (part of the FOREST research project), and Sophia Couchman (PhD student at Maynooth) shared some of her findings about how pollinator abundance varies with the variable Irish summer weather.

Alexandra Valentine (PhD student at Galway) updated the meeting on her work on the Irish honeybee, and her work on morphological and molecular traits of Irish bees. Whilst Darren O’Connell (postdoc at UCD) presented a meta-analysis done as part of the National Apiculture Programme on the challenges associated with the treatment of Varroa using different methods. Julia Jones (Assistant Professor at UCD) presented findings from a study in the UK on non-native and native commercial bumblebee imports that demonstrated little introgression of non-native genes into wild populations. Julia announced that they have been awarded funding for the next phase of the National Apiculture Programme, and called for researchers to join their efforts.

Dara Stanley (Assistant Professor at UCD) did an excellent job of summarising the findings of three major research projects: PROTECTS, SusPoll and PoshBee, all of which examined the exposure and impacts of pesticides on pollinators. Some of the key findings were 1. The most widely used pesticides in Ireland are herbicides and fungicides; 2. There is little known about these products on bees; 3. Pesticide residues are found in crops, wild plants, and the pollen collected by bees; 4. Herbicides can influence molecular processes and functioning like digestion and learning in bumblebees; 5. Non-neonicotinoid insecticides can have sub-lethal impacts on pollen collection by bumblebee colonies and on solitary bees; and 6. Although Irish pollinators are most active in the middle of the day, we should think about mitigating pesticide use in a broader context than just spraying at different times.  

Dara Stanley summarising the pollinator-pesticide work from 3 recently completed collaborative research projects

Following this, Jess Knapp (Assistant Professor at Trinity) presented a major output from the PoshBee project, showing that despite strict risk assessment and regulatory process in Europe, pesticides are still having negative impacts on bumblebees, particularly in intensive agricultural landscapes. This research, which was the biggest standardised experiment ever performed on bumblebees, was recently presented to EFSA, the body that assesses pesticide risks and advises the European Commission, emphasising the importance of research for informing policy and regulation.  

In an exciting development for Irish pollinator research, Sarah Larragy (postdoc in Trinity) introduced the community to the new EU funded project, Restpoll. As Sarah explained, Restpoll is an EU wide project looking to understand how to restore habitats to help pollinators. The project kicked off at the end of 2023 in Sweden, so we’ll update you in future years on what they find.

Jane Stout (Professor in Trinity) closed out the conference with a discussion on translating research into impact. The group identified the stakeholders who should be informed by research, and the methods that are used for research dissemination. Challenges to bridging the gaps between research and practice/policy were discussed, and the Irish Pollinator Research Network as a whole was challenged to take our research out of the lab and into society, and to help each other to do that.

Jane Stout leading a discussion on engaged research for impact.

About the Author: Ed Straw is an IRC postdoc in Jane Stout’s research group at Trinity College Dublin.

World Bee Day – 20th May 2023

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Did you know that there are more than 20,000 species of bee on the planet? And 100 different species just in Ireland? Did you know that only a few species live in social groups and make honey, that only female bees sting, and that stinging isn’t a fatal endeavour for most bee species?

When people think of bees, they tend to focus on honey, hives and stings, and various oft-quoted myths. They don’t realise that bees are a hugely diverse group of animals that have incredibly interesting lives.

Bees are a morphologically diverse group of insects – ranging from species that are a tiny ~2mm long, to species that are a massive 19x that size (about 38mm long). They are ecologically diverse too – some nest in the ground, others in holes in trees, and some even in the nests of other bees (these are called kleptoparasites, behaving in a similar way to cuckoo birds – killing the rightful occupants and laying their own eggs).

The one thing they virtually all have in common is that they need flowers to feed from – they get their energy and make honey from nectar, and get protein for growth and repair from pollen. Except ‘vulture bees’, which are a small group of closely related North American stingless bee species that feed on rotting meat. They use the meat as their protein source, but still make honey from nectar. So all bees need flowers to complete their live cycles (and, many flowers need bees too).

They are really an amazing group of insects, much more than just honey and hype.

And they have become cool. They adorn furnishings, clothing, crockery, water bottles – the list is endless. They typify pollinators – animals that move pollen between plants and enable seed and fruit production – and so are important to our agricultural system. And have become foci for conservation initiatives all over the world. They even have their own day in the year (20th May – World Bee Day).

But strangely enough, we don’t know everything there is to know about bees. Far from it. Most of what we know comes from a small handful of managed species – the honeybee, the buff-tailed bumblebee, the red mason bee. Even in Ireland, we don’t know nearly enough about most of our bees. When the most recent conservation assessment of Ireland’s bees was made in 2006, 16 species couldn’t be assigned a threat status because we didn’t know enough about them. Of the bees that we did know enough about, more than a third of them turned out to be threatened with extinction.

Want to learn more about Ireland’s bees? Have a go at our World Bee Day #BeeBingo, and look out for eight species active at the moment!

Since then, concerted efforts have been made to find out more about Ireland’s bees, and to protect them. Lots of research has been done (with eight PhDs completed on Irish bees in the past 12 months), and lots of practical conservation efforts undertaken, mostly under the auspices of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan.

Trinity College Dublin has played a leading role in this. Professor Jane Stout in the School of Natural Sciences has been researching bees, their behaviour, and the causes and consequences of their decline for the past two decades. In this time, she and her research group have published dozens of scientific papers, and Prof. Stout co-founded the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan with Trinity alumnus, Dr Úna FitzPatrick at the National Biodiversity Data Centre. This has galvanised action the length and breadth of Ireland to protect and restore pollinators.

Trinity plays its part in a practical way too – the iconic lawns at the front gate have been transformed into ornamental meadows and low- and no-mow regimes have been implemented in other areas to allow wildflowers to flourish. Even in the city centre, both of these approaches can provide habitat for bees and other wildlife.

So this World Bee Day, take a closer look at these amazing insects, they are, of course, important pollinators, helping to maintain ecosystems and produce human food crops, but they are also fascinating and wonderful creatures in their own right.

About the author: Professor Jane Stout is Vice-President for Biodiversity and Climate Action at Trinity College Dublin, and has spent most of her professional career studying bees – their ecology, conservation and importance to people.

Bee Bingo for World Bee Day 2023

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Did you know that there are more than 20,000 different species of bee worldwide and about 100 different species in Ireland alone?

To help raise awareness about some of our local species, post-doctoral researchers Alison O’Reilly and Cian White have developed a game… Bee Bingo. It’s easy to play – there are eight different bee species to spot (photos and information on all in the images below) – these bees are all out and about at this time of year, so find somewhere flowery, sheltered and take a closer look at the insects visiting the flowers – can you spot all eight?

If you do see them all, and reach a “full hive”, then share your accomplishments on social media #beebingo and tag us @CampusBuzzTCD.

Good luck and have fun!