Motivations underpinning honeybee management practices: A Q methodology study with UK beekeepers.

Beekeepers are central to pollinator health. For policymakers and beekeeping organisations to develop widely accepted strategies to sustain honeybee populations alongside wild pollinators, a structured understanding of beekeeper motivations is essential. UK beekeepers are increasing in number, with diverse management styles despite calls for coordinated practice to manage honeybee health.

Rapid assessment of insect pollination services to inform decision-making.

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 survey, and empirical manipulation with exclusion experiments) for rapid insect pollination assessment at site scale were developed to provide an adaptable framework that is accessible to nonspecialist with limited resources.

CropPol: A dynamic, open and global database on crop pollination.

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 yield, as well as to anticipate changes in this service, develop predictions, and inform management actions.

Drought reduces floral resources for pollinators.

Climate change is predicted to result in increased occurrence and intensity of drought in many regions worldwide. By increasing plant physiological stress, drought is likely to affect the floral resources (flowers, nectar and pollen) that are available to pollinators. However, little is known about impacts of drought at the community level, nor whether plant community functional composition influences these impacts.

Enhancing the Biodiversity of Ditches in Intensively Managed UK Farmland.

Drainage ditches, either seasonally flooded or permanent, are commonly found on intensively managed lowland farmland in the UK. They are potentially important for wetland biodiversity but, despite their ubiquity, information on their biodiversity and management in the wider countryside is scarce. We surveyed 175 ditches for their physical and chemical characteristics, spatial connectivity, plant communities and aquatic invertebrates in an area of intensively managed farmland in Oxfordshire, UK and collected information on ditch management from farmer interviews.

Microsite affects willow sapling recovery from bank vole (Myodes glareolus) herbivory, but does not affect grazing risk.

Background: Large herbivores are often removed or reduced as part of vegetation restoration programmes, but the resultant increase in vegetation biomass and changes in vegetation structure may favour small mammals. Small mammals may have large impacts on plant community composition via granivory and sapling herbivory, and increased small mammal populations may reduce any benefits of large herbivore removal for highly preferred species. This study tested the impacts of small mammal herbivory, microsite characteristics and their interaction on growth and survival of three montane willow species with differing chemical compositions, Salix lapponum, S.