Wild pollinator conservation in cities – strategies to success
Costanza Geppert
Urbanization is widely regarded as a major threat to biodiversity. However, recent research highlighted the ecological importance of cities for pollinators. In this talk, we will discuss the role of cities in the conservation of pollinator insects, and investigate good practices examples, with a focus on people's socio-psychological drivers of the willingness to help bees, hoverflies and butterflies.
Pollinator-mediated effects of landscape-scale land use on plant communities
Yann Clough
Pollinators are important plant mutualists, but the implications of the threat of declining pollinator populations for wild plant communities is surprisingly poorly understood. In this talk I will review the evidence available for why a reduction in pollinator availability, as a results of land-use changes, may – or may not – lead to consequences on plant community composition and associated ecosystem functions. I will draw on a selection of published evidence and present new results from an ongoing project in which my research team and I have experimentally manipulated pollinator communities in grasslands for several years.
More tba.