BBSRC grant awarded

Delighted to say that our lab has secured £833,339 of BBSRC funding. The title of the grant is ‘Resilience of pollinators in a changing world: impact of developmental environment on metabolism and energetic budgets in social and solitary bees’. The project, which is a collaboration with Dr Beth Nicholls (@BethBees) and Prof Jeremy Niven, both at the University of Sussex, will investigate and model the dietary requirements of wild bees: solitary mason bees and social bumblebees, and how these are altered by increasing temperatures. The pollen and nectar collected by bees from different crops vary widely in the content of carbohydrate, protein and fat. Bees’ health depends on access to a mix of nutrition appropriate for the conditions - but the climate is heating up, and so the ideal mix may change. Crucially, if this affects bees’ flower choices, then the pollination services bees provide today may not be the same at higher temperatures. This project will measure and model the effects of changing nutrition and temperature upon these bees, allowing us to design appropriate, future-proof mitigation/intervention measures. It will help to close a critical gap in our understanding of bee foraging behaviour and the modulating role of temperature. We will be hiring a PDRA and technicians soon - keep an eye out!