Follow Your Nose: The Bee Whisperers!

Urban areas present many challenges for pollinating insects. While the impacts of reduced habitat availability have been well-studied, less attention has been given to other stressors, including pollution, drought, and heat. These can affect pollinators directly, through health and development, and indirectly, by impacting the quality of plants they feed on. Stephanie's research compares the insects visiting wildflower patches in high and low-stress locations around Sheffield. Understanding how these stressors impact pollinators is essential for effective conservation in urban environments.

Pollination is an important ecosystem process, most flowering plants rely on pollination in varying degrees to reproduce, with insects comprising the majority of pollinating visitors. These plants present a wide variety of important traits to attract pollinating insects, such as flower colour, size and shape. However, an underappreciated method of plant-insect communication is in plant/flower smell. Molly's research seeks to understand how scent mediates important interactions between insects and plants, primarily in pollination, but also its role in herbivore defence.