Simon G Potts

University of Reading · School of Agriculture, Policy and Development

To address the biodiversity crisis, global and regional policy frameworks like the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the European Green Deal demand to monitor biodiversity. Despite these efforts, existing approaches for monitoring biodiversity remain fragmented and lack data integration. Here, we review and synthesize crucial infor...

There is strong evidence that landscape‐scale factors such as habitat diversity, composition and configuration are important drivers of declines in pollinators and pollination services. However, context and species‐specific responses make it challenging to draw general conclusions about the most important components of landscapes that support diver...

Conservation, restoration and land management are increasingly implemented at landscape scales1,2. However, because species interaction data are typically habitat- and/or guild-specific, exactly how those interactions connect habitats and affect the stability and function of communities at landscape scales remains poorly understood. We combine mult...

Carabid beetles are major predators in agro-ecosystems. The composition of their communities within crop environments governs the pest control services they provide. Field margins and landscape features are known to affect carabid community composition, yet evidence is currently lacking that can be used to support land management decisions targeted...

Despite increasing recognition of the importance of the multiple dimensions of biodiversity, including functional or genetic diversity as well as species diversity, most conservation studies on ecosystem service‐providing insects focus on simple diversity measures such as species richness and abundance. In contrast, relatively little is known about...

Accurately predicting flowering phenology in fruit tree orchards is crucial for timely pest and pathogen treatments and for the introduction of managed pollinators. Making predictions requires large datasets of flowering dates, which are often limited to single locations. Consequently, resulting phenology predictions are not representative across l...

The cover image is based on the Research Article Quantifying the impact of Psylliodes chrysocephala injury on the productivity of oilseed rape by Duncan J Coston et al., https://doi.org/10.1002/ps.7860 . image

Introducing www.beefall.org an online tool to help in "Understanding and addressing shortfalls in European wild bee data". Our understanding of bee diversity and ecology is hindered by data deficits and knowledge gaps. BeeFall uses a digital collection of ecological data on European wild bees to map important gaps in our knowledge. This includes wh...

Ecological intensification (EI) provides an important and increasingly adopted pathway for achieving more sustainable agricultural systems. However, the implementation and success of on‐farm EI practices may vary depending on landscape context and local management practices. We evaluated how EI interventions, including two different agricultural in...

Infectious and parasitic agents (IPAs) and their associated diseases are major environmental stressors that jeopardize bee health, both alone and in interaction with other stressors. Their impact on pollinator communities can be assessed by studying multiple sentinel bee species. Here, we analysed the field exposure of three sentinel managed bee sp...

Understanding and reversing biodiversity decline in the Anthropocene requires robust data on species taxonomic identity, distribution, ecology, and population trends. Data deficits hinder biodiversity assessments and conservation , and despite major advances over the past few decades, our understanding of bee diversity, decline and distribution in...

Insects are key components of food chains, and monitoring data provides new opportunities to identify trophic relationships at broad spatial and temporal scales. Here, combining two monitoring datasets from Great Britain, we reveal how the population dynamics of the blue tit Cyanistes caeruleus are influenced by the abundance of moths – a core comp...

Sustainable agriculture requires balancing crop yields with the effects of pesticides on non-target organisms, such as bees and other crop pollinators. Field studies demonstrated that agricultural use of neonicotinoid insecticides can negatively affect wild bee species1,2, leading to restrictions on these compounds³. However, besides neonicotinoids...

Pollination is a crucial ecosystem service contributing to global food security. Moringa ( Moringa oleifera ) is an economically important tropical crop, mostly cultivated by smallholder farmers. Well‐established approaches of planting flower‐rich patches used in temperate agroecosystems for pollination enhancement were adapted to tropical moringa...

BACKGROUND Current European Union and United Kingdom legislation prohibits the use of neonicotinoid insecticidal seed treatments in oilseed rape (OSR, Brassica napus). This ban, and the reduction in efficacy of pyrethroid insecticide sprays due to resistance, has exacerbated pest pressure from the cabbage stem flea beetle (Psylliodes chrysocephala)...

Climate plays a major role in determining where species occur, and when they are active throughout the year. In the face of a changing climate, many species are shifting their ranges poleward. Many species are also shifting their emergence phenology. Wild bees in Great Britain are susceptible to changes in climatic conditions but little is known ab...

Biodiversity monitoring in agricultural landscapes is important for assessing the effects of both land use change and activities that influence farmland biodiversity. Despite a considerable increase in citizen science approaches to biodiversity monitoring in recent decades, their potential in farmland-specific contexts has not been systematically e...

Managed bee species provide essential pollination services that contribute to food security worldwide. However, managed bees face a diverse array of threats and anticipating these, and potential opportunities to reduce risks, is essential for the sustainable management of pollination services. We conducted a horizon scanning exercise with 20 expert...

Many pollinators, including bumble bees, are in decline. Such declines are known to be driven by a number of interacting factors. Decreases in bee populations may also negatively impact the key ecosystem service, pollination, that they provide. Pesticides and parasites are often cited as two of the drivers of bee declines, particularly as they have...

Spotted-wing Drosophila (Drosophila suzukii) oviposits in a wide range of soft and stone fruit, which can result in a reduction of fruit quality and yield. An invasive, polyphagous species, D. suzukii targets ripe fruit, such as raspberries, which are commonly grown in polytunnels. With increasing restriction on the use of agrochemicals, effective...

Climate change has a diverse range of impacts on wild bees, including their phenology or timing of life history events. Climate-driven phenological shifts can not only impact individuals at species level but also threaten the vital pollination service that wild bees provide to both wild plants and cultivated crops. Despite their involvement in poll...

Many publications lack sufficient background information (e.g. location) to be interpreted, replicated, or reused for synthesis. This impedes scientific progress and the application of science to practice. Reporting guidelines (e.g. checklists) improve reporting standards. They have been widely taken up in the medical sciences, but not in ecologica...

Wild ground-nesting bees are key pollinators of apple (Malus domestica). We explored, (1) where they choose to nest, (2) what influences site selection and (3) species richness in orchards. Twenty-three orchards were studied over three years; twelve were treated with additional herbicide to increase bare ground with the remainder as untreated contr...

Aim: Wild bees still face striking shortfalls in knowledge of biodiversity in key regions of the world. This includes Europe, where despite a long tradition of data gathering, the continental scale distribution patterns of wild bees have not been systematically analysed to date. This study aims to characterise large-scale biodiversity patterns to:...

Plant invasions can lead to homogeneous communities with decreased functional diversity. However, invasive plants, with various morphological and phenological traits, may drive pollinator communities in a less predictable, more complex way. They can promote pollinators compatible with their floral traits, while leaving others without foraging resou...

The phenology, or timing of key life-history events, of many globally important crops and the insects that pollinate them are shifting because of the changing climate. Where these temporal shifts occur at different rates or in different directions, it induces a risk of phenological mismatch, potentially reducing the quality and quantity of crop pro...

In recent years winter sown oilseed rape (OSR) production has decreased as the result of loss of control of an insect pest, the cabbage stem flea beetle (Psylliodes chrysocephala L.), due to the pest developing resistance to pyrethroid insecticides, and the EU ban on the use of neonicotinoid seed dressings. There is therefore an urgent need to deve...

There is increasing evidence that farmers in many areas are achieving below maximum yields due to insufficient pollination. Practical and effective approaches are needed to maintain wild pollinator populations within agroecosystems so they can deliver critical pollination services that underpin crop production. We established nesting and wildflower...

Context Agri-environment schemes support land management interventions that benefit biodiversity, environmental objectives, and other public goods. Process-based model simulations suggest the English scheme, as implemented in 2016, increased wild bee pollination services to pollinator-dependent crops and non-crop areas in a geographically heterogen...

Most bee species are ground-nesters, yet knowledge on the nesting behaviour of this diverse group remains sparse. Evidence on the effectiveness of ground-nesting bee species as crop pollinators is growing, but there is limited information on their nesting habits and preferences and how to manage habitats to enhance populations on farms. In this stu...

Wild bees are declining, mainly due to the expansion of urban habitats that have led to land-use changes. Effects of urbanization on wild bee communities are still unclear, as shown by contrasting reports on their species and functional diversities in urban habitats. To address this current controversy, we built a large dataset, merging 16 surveys...

Supporting biodiversity in agricultural landscapes is key from both a conservation and ecosystem services perspective. Planting flower margins along crop field edges is one of the most established approaches to try and improve habitat and resources for insect pollinators on farms. Whilst there is growing evidence that these margins can result in in...

Food system resilience has multiple dimensions. We draw on food system and resilience concepts and review resilience framings of different communities. We present four questions to frame food system resilience (Resilience of what? Resilience to what? Resilience from whose perspective? Resilience for how long?) and three approaches to enhancing resi...

Food system resilience has multiple dimensions. We draw on food system and resilience concepts and review resilience framings of different communities. We present four questions to frame food system resilience (Resilience of what? Resilience to what? Resilience from whose perspective? Resilience for how long?) and three approaches to enhancing resi...

Disturbances alter biodiversity via their specific characteristics, including severity and extent in the landscape, which act at different temporal and spatial scales. Biodiversity response to disturbance also depends on the community characteristics and habitat requirements of species. Untangling the mechanistic interplay of these factors has guid...

To provide a complete portrayal of the multiple factors negatively impacting insects in agricultural landscapes it is necessary to assess the concurrent incidence, magnitude, and interactions among multiple stressors over substantial biogeographical scales. Trans-national ecological field investigations with wide-ranging stakeholders typically enco...

Drosophila suzukii (SWD) poses a threat to soft and stone fruit globally. SWD inhabits non‐crop areas adjacent to farms from where it moves into crops to cause damage. Effective IPM control strategies, considering both the crop and non‐crop area, are needed to control this economically important pest. We conducted a meta‐analysis to quantify the im...

Organic mulches are a traditional method of groundcover management in temperate commercial orchards, now largely replaced by herbicides and synthetic fertilisers. As a potential contribution to improving orchard sustainability, we hypothesised that the addition of organic mulches would: (H1) improve soil fertility and lead to greater tree growth an...

Research into pollinators in managed landscapes has recently combined approaches of pollination ecology and landscape ecology, because key stressors are likely to interact across wide areas. While laboratory and field experiments are valuable for furthering understanding, studies are required to investigate the interacting drivers of pollinator hea...

Human driven environmental changes increase the concentrations of polluting reactive compounds in the troposphere, such as ozone and nitrogen oxides. These changes lead to biodiversity losses and alter plant physiology and plant-pollinator interactions, essential for pollination services, with potential consequences for agricultural production. Her...

BACKGROUND Natural enemy pest control is becoming more desirable as restrictions increase on pesticide use. Carabid beetles are proven agents of natural‐enemy pest control (NPC), controlling pests and weeds in crop areas. Agro‐ecological measures can be effective for boosting carabid abundance and associated NPC, but the benefits of specific interv...

Tropical forests in India have declined at an alarming rate over the past century, with extensive literature focusing on the high contributions of agricultural expansions to deforestation, while the effects of climate change have largely been overlooked. Climate change effects, such as increasing temperatures, drought and flooding have already occu...

Pollinator declines have prompted efforts to assess how land‐use change affects insect pollinators and pollination services in agricultural landscapes. Yet many tools to measure insect pollination services require substantial landscape‐scale data and technical expertise. In expert workshops, 3 straightforward methods (desk‐based method, field surve...

Seventy five percent of the world's food crops benefit from insect pollination. Hence, there has been increased interest in how global change drivers impact this critical ecosystem service. Because standardized data on crop pollination are rarely available, we are limited in our capacity to understand the variation in pollination benefits to crop y...

Agri-environment schemes are programmes where landholders enter into voluntary agreements (typically with governments) to manage agricultural land for environmental protection and nature conservation objectives. Previous work at local scale has shown that these features can provide additional floral and nesting resources to support wild pollinators...

A two page summary of the article designed for wider audiences or very busy academics. Please feel free to distribute.

• Wild bees provide a critical ecosystem service by pollinating globally important crops. Documented bee declines, notably in agricultural landscapes, therefore threaten future food security. Yet, evaluations of methods to inventory bees are rarely carried out in different crops or focus specifically upon crop pollinating species. • We utilise stan...

Background and aims – Agricultural intensification and loss of farmland heterogeneity have contributed to population declines of wild bees and other pollinators, which may have caused subsequent declines in insect-pollinated wild plants. Material and methods – Using data from 37 studies on 22 pollinator-dependent wild plant species across Europe, w...

Renewable energy deployment has accelerated exponentially, taking up a growing area of land at a time of increasing land use pressure and environmental degradation. Land use change for renewable energy can have positive and negative environmental consequences, but robustly quantifying the effects is challenging. Here, we evaluate the monetary benef...

Sown wildflower areas are increasingly recommended as an agri-environmental intervention measure, but evidence for their success is limited to particular insect groups or hampered by the challenges of establishing seed mixes and maintaining flower abundance over time. We conducted a replicated experiment to establish wildflower areas to support ins...

A plain langauge 2 page overview of the paper "Opportunities to reduce pollination deficits and address production shortfalls in an important insect-pollinated crop" designed for non-acedemic audiences (or very busy acedemics). Please feel free to pass this along.

Pollinators face multiple pressures and there is evidence of populations in decline. As demand for insect‐pollinated crops increases, crop production is threatened by shortfalls in pollination services. Understanding the extent of current yield deficits due to pollination and identifying opportunities to protect or improve crop yield and quality th...

Pollinator decline has attracted global attention and substantial efforts are underway to respond through national pollinator strategies and action plans. These policy responses require clarity on what is driving pollinator decline and what risks it generates for society in different parts of the world. Using a formal expert elicitation process, we...

This is a two page infographic summary of the main paper aimed at policymakers and staff who simply don't have the time to readv the full paper. Please feel free to pass it around.

Pollinators experience large spatiotemporal fluctuations in resource availability when mass‐flowering crops are rotated with resource‐poor cereal crops. Yet, few studies have considered the effect this has on pollinator population stability, nor how this might be mitigated to maintain consistent crop pollination services. We assess the potential of...

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...

PoshBee is a 5-year funded project (2018-2023) that aims to support healthy bee populations, sustainable beekeeping, and consequently pollination for crops and wildflowers across Europe. To do this we take a range of approaches, from the laboratory to the field, from molecules to ecosystems, and from fundamental science to risk assessment. This doc...

Renewable power capacity is increasing globally in response to energy decarbonisation, with solar photovoltaic (PV) projected to be the dominant renewable. A significant proportion of solar PV is deployed as ground-mounted solar parks with potential implications for the hosting ecosystem. Given their relatively rapid introduction, the impacts on la...