Dave Goulson

University of Sussex · Department of Evolution, Behaviour and Environment

There is a significant knowledge gap regarding the pollination needs of urban farming, partly due to barriers for researchers in accessing these growing spaces. Involving growers in data collection offers a potential solution but presents other challenges in terms of data accuracy and participant retention. We developed a citizen science methodolog...

There is growing concern that some managed and wild insect pollinator populations are in decline, potentially threatening biodiversity and sustainable food production on a global scale. In recent years, there has been increasing evidence that sub-lethal exposure to neurotoxic, neonicotinoid pesticides can negatively affect pollinator immunocompeten...

Climate change is currently considered one of the major threats to biodiversity and is associated with an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, such as heatwaves. Heatwaves create acutely stressful conditions that may lead to disruption in the performance and survival of ecologically and economically important organisms...

Insect pollination is fundamental for natural ecosystems and agricultural crops. The bumblebee species Bombus terrestris has become a popular choice for commercial crop pollination worldwide due to its effectiveness and ease of mass rearing. Bumblebee colonies are mass produced for the pollination of more than 20 crops and imported into over 50 cou...

Due to the convenience and efficacy of modern ectoparasiticides, routine prophylactic use has become commonplace for dogs and cats. However, the environmental consequences of this large-scale use are not well-understood, and multiple potential pathways for ectoparasiticides to the environment exist. Of particular concern is the potential for topica...

Societal Impact Statement Urban food production could contribute towards sustainable food provision and would also deliver benefits to biodiversity and the health of urban residents. Many crops rely on insect pollination, but urban pollinator populations are under‐studied. In this study, crop–pollinator interactions and pollination quality were qua...

A common debate on the value of citizen science projects is the accuracy of data collected and the validity of conclusions drawn. Sow Wild! was a hypothesis-driven citizen science project that investigated the benefits of sowing a 4 m2 mini-meadow in private gardens and allotments to attract beneficial insects. The use of researcher-verified specim...

Gardens are regularly portrayed as green oases, refuges for wildlife that has been displaced from the countryside by intensive farming practices which have reduced habitat availability. Pesticides are also commonly used in urban areas, but few studies have investigated their impacts. In this study, we explored how bird richness and abundance in gar...

Wildflower strips are a popular agri‐environment scheme (AES) implemented on farmland to provide forage for insect pollinators. The standard seed mixtures were often formulated without a clear evidence base, and subsequent field trials to assess their attractiveness to insects are commonly carried out at low taxonomic resolution (e.g., pooling all...

Floral abundance and richness on farmland has been declining since the mid 1900 s. Agri-environment schemes (AES) can improve floral resource availability through establishment of flower-rich areas or careful management of areas set-aside to naturally regenerate on farmland. Ideal management regimes include sowing and re-sowing of seed mixes, regul...

Despite the importance of pollinating insects to natural environments and agriculture, there have been few attempts to unite the existing plant–pollinator interaction datasets into a single depository using a common format. Accordingly, we have created one of the world's first online, open‐access, and searchable pollinator–plant interaction databas...

Traditional vineyard landscapes are generally intensively managed with heavy reliance on synthetic pesticides. Viticulture is one of the fastest-growing sectors of English agriculture and information on land management is essential to secure a sustainable future. We surveyed viticulturists to ascertain vineyard pest presence, pest control, inter-ro...

The use of pesticides is one of the causes that contribute to the decline of bumblebees worldwide. Some effects of neonicotinoids are known on bumblebees from temperate climates; however, there are no studies carried out with species from tropical climates, in which there could be different effects since they have different ecological traits. We de...

Habitat loss and fragmentation are considered the foremost threats in pollinator decline, and in England and Wales, 97% of wildflower meadows were lost by 1984. The value of creating flower-rich margins in agricultural environments is established, yet there is growing potential to support pollinator populations in urban landscapes. We used citizen...

Efficient foraging is vital to bee fitness but is challenging in the Anthropocene.

We determine the exposure of wild birds to pesticides via consumption of fludioxonil-treated winter wheat seeds following autumn drilling. We recorded the density of seeds left on the soil surface, bird density, and consumption of pesticide-treated seed by birds using camera traps. We calculated the dose ingested by each bird species in a single fe...

Several agri-environment schemes aim to improve pollinator diversity and abundance, including the sowing of wildflower areas. These seed mixes are often either low in floral diversity and target few pollinator species (mainly social bees), or high in floral diversity but with limited evidence of good establishment of the component species. In order...

Social insects have high levels of cooperation and division of labor. In bumble bees this is partly size-based, with larger bees performing tasks outside the nest and smaller bees remaining inside, although bumble bees still display considerable behavioral plasticity. The level of specialization in tasks outside the colony, including foraging, guar...

• In farmland landscapes worldwide, there are pervasive trends for either intensification or abandonment. Intensification is a widely recognised driver of wild bee declines, but little is known about the consequences of land abandonment, though it involves major habitat shifts from fallows, pastures and meadows, to shrublands and forests. • Focusin...

Anthe et al. (Environ Sci Eur 32:147, 2020. 10.1186/s12302-020-00424-4 ) develop a mathematical model to calculate the contribution of veterinary medicinal products (VMPs) to the levels of imidacloprid observed in the UK water monitoring programme. They find that VMPs make only a very small contribution to measured pollution levels, and that the es...

To the Editor — Access to pesticide-use data is essential to accurately evaluate the adverse effects of pesticides on human and ecosystem health. In Europe, applicators are usually required to record the location and date of pesticide applications1. A subset of these data is periodically sampled to produce heavily aggregated estimates of pesticide...

With many plant–pollinator interactions undergoing change as species’ distributions shift, we require a better understanding of how the addition of new interacting partners can affect plant reproduction. One such group of floral visitors, nectar robbers, can deplete plants of nectar rewards without contributing to pollination. The addition of necta...

The importance of wild bees for crop pollination is well established, but less is known about which species contribute to service delivery to inform agricultural management, monitoring and conservation. Using sites in Great Britain as a case study, we use a novel qualitative approach combining ecological information and field survey data to establi...

Wind is an understudied environmental variable capable of having profound impacts upon the foraging behaviour of flying organisms. We investigated the effects of wind and temperature on honey bees, Apis mellifera, foraging on two plant varieties, Lavandula x intermedia ‘Grosso’ and Origanum vulgare to determine how wind influences foraging behaviou...

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With many plant-pollinator interactions undergoing change, we require a better understanding of how the addition of new interacting partners, such as antagonists, can affect plant reproduction. One such group of antagonistic floral visitors, nectar robbers, can deplete plants of nectar rewards without contributing to pollination. The addition of ne...

A recurrent concern in nature conservation is the potential competition for forage plants between wild bees and managed honey bees. Specifically, that the highly sophisticated system of recruitment and large perennial colonies of honey bees quickly exhaust forage resources leading to the local extirpation of wild bees. However, different species of...

Colletes hederae, the ivy bee, (Hymenoptera: Colletidae) has undergone large range expansions in Europe in recent years, including colonising Britain in 2001 with its original distribution limited to Western mainland Europe and the Channel Islands. It is thought to specialise on Hedera helix L. (Apiales: Ariliaceae), common ivy. However, some resea...

New information on the lethal and sublethal effects of neonicotinoids and fipronil on organisms is presented in this review, complementing the previous Worldwide Integrated Assessment (WIA) in 2015. The high toxicity of these systemic insecticides to invertebrates has been confirmed and expanded to include more species and compounds. Most of the re...

Solitary bees have experienced a decline in both diversity and abundance over the past decade. Although their foraging requirements have been the subject of some recent studies, their nesting requirements have received little attention. Some species of ground-nesting solitary bees have shown an affinity for hard, bare ground as preferred locations...

Little is known about the environmental fate or impact of pesticides used to control companion animal parasites. Using data from the Environment Agency, we examined the occurrence of fipronil, fipronil metabolites and imidacloprid in 20 English rivers from 2016 to 2018, as indicators of the potential contamination of waterways from their use as ect...

Bumblebees (Bombus spp.) are ecologically and economically important pollinating insects and nutritional stress is one of the most significant factors causing their decline. However, our knowledge of the nutritional requirements of bumblebees is largely limited to just a small number of species that can be easily reared in the laboratory, so there...

Bumblebees are constantly exposed to a wide range of biotic and abiotic stresses which they must defend themselves against to survive. Pathogens and pesticides represent important stressors that influence bumblebee health, both when acting alone or in combination. To better understand bumblebee health, we need to investigate how these factors inter...

Food production depends upon the adequate provision of underpinning ecosystem services, such as pollination. Paradoxically, conventional farming practices are undermining these services and resulting in degraded soils, polluted waters, greenhouse gas emissions and massive loss of biodiversity including declines in pollinators. In essence, farming i...

Most people are aware that pollinators are in trouble, and with them agricultural products worth more than $200 billion annually (FAO. Pollinators vital to our food supply under threat. http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/384726/icode/, 2017). Pollinators are fundamental to maintaining both biodiversity and agricultural productivity, but habitat...

Floral plantings are promoted to foster ecological intensification of agriculture through provision-ing of ecosystem services. However, a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of different floral plantings, their characteristics and consequences for crop yield is lacking. Here we quantified the impacts of flower strips and hedgerows on pest...

In this study, we analyze changing patterns of pesticide use in agriculture in Great Britain over the 1990-2016 period, with respect to the risk they pose to birds. The weight of pesticides applied decreased by 51% between 1990 and 2016, but the area treated increased by 63% over the same period. Over this period, there has been considerable turnov...

1. Global pollinator declines have led to concern that crop yields might fall as a result of a pollination deficit. Companion planting is a traditional practice thought to increase yield of insect pollinated crops by planting a co‐flowering species next to the crop. 2. Using a combination of conventional researcher‐led experiments and observational...

Leonard et al. (Science 367, 573-576, 2020) presented an interesting approach to limit the impact of pathogens on honeybees by stimulating immunity via engineered symbionts. The urgency to safeguard pollinator services is undoubted. Massive declines in bees, insects in general, pose major concerns for ecosystem stability and food production. Howev...

There is great interest in planting urban areas to benefit pollinating insects, with the potential that urban areas and gardens could act as an extensive network of pollinator-friendly habitats. However, there are a great many different plant cultivars available to the gardener, and a paucity of evidence-based advice as to which plants are truly mo...

Governmental agri-environment schemes (AES) aim to improve pollinator abundance and diversity on farmland by sowing wildflower seed mixes. These often contain high proportions of Fabaceae, particularly Trifolium (clovers), which are attractive to some bumblebee species, but not to most of the ~ 240 solitary bee species in the UK. Here we identify w...

Bumblebees are important pollinating insects, but many species have suffered declines over the last century. Long-tongued bumblebees have been identified as particularly at risk, partly due to their more selective diet. Attempts to study these species in captivity have been impeded by stress-induced behaviours which cause queens to kill or abandon...

Insekten sind weltweit die artenreichste Tiergruppe und für die Funktion von Ökosystemen unerlässlich. Der dramatische Rückgang der Insekten hat in Mitteleuropa inzwischen alarmierende Ausmaße erreicht. Er ist Anzeichen einer globalen Biodiversitätskrise, die sich bereits seit Jahrzehnten abgezeichnet hat und die unabsehbare ökonomische und ökologi...

To date, regulatory pesticide risk assessments have relied on the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) (Hymenoptera: Apidae) as a surrogate test species for estimating the risk of pesticide exposure to all bee species. However, honey bees and non-Apis bees may differ in their susceptibility and exposure to pesticides. In 2017, a workshop ('Pesticide Expos...

All life requires the capacity to recover from challenges that are as inevitable as they are unpredictable. Understanding this resilience is essential for managing the health of humans and their livestock. It has long been difficult to quantify resilience directly, forcing practitioners to rely on indirect static indicators of health. However, meas...

The evidence of negative impacts of agricultural pesticides on non-target organisms is constantly growing. One of the most widely used group of pesticides are neonicotinoids, used in treatments of various plants, e.g. oilseed crops, corn and apples, to prevent crop damage by agricultural insect pests. Treatment effects have been found to spill over...

The sustainable intensification of agricultural systems offers synergistic opportunities for the co-production of agricultural and natural capital outcomes. Efficiency and substitution are steps towards sustainable intensification, but system redesign is essential to deliver optimum outcomes as ecological and economic conditions change. We show glo...

A strong argument can be made that the European Union has the most rigorous regulatory system for pesticides in the world, and that modern pesticide use poses fewer environmental threats than older regimes. Nevertheless, the impacts of pesticides on bees and other non-target organisms are much debated in Europe as elsewhere. Here we document changi...

Concerns regarding the impact of neonicotinoid exposure on bee populations recently led to an EU-wide moratorium on the use of certain neonicotinoids on flowering crops. Currently evidence regarding the impact, if any, the moratorium has had on bees’ exposure is limited. We sampled pollen and nectar from bumblebee colonies in rural and peri-urban h...

On 28 April 2018 the European Parliament voted for a complete and permanent ban on all outdoor uses of the three most commonly used neonicotinoid pesticides. With the partial exception of the state of Ontario, Canada, governments elsewhere have failed to take action. Below is a letter, signed by 232 scientists from around the world, urgently callin...