Gardens set for £1.3m research project
10:00am Monday 30th May 2011 in News
FRONT gardens in Grange Park will play a key part in a £1.3 million research project into how urbanization is affecting bees, flies and other pollinating insects across the UK.
Over the next few months, teams of ecologists will be sampling plants, pollinators and their interactions within a 1km-square area of Swindon which encompasses three habitats: city, farmland and nature reserve.
As part of the project, led by the University of Bristol, they will visit front gardens in Grange Park to study the plants and insects there.
This fieldwork – the first stage in a three-year project – aims to discover where pollinators are found in the UK.
Rather than just counting species, the researchers will study the network of interactions between plants and their pollinators as these interactions have a profound impact on a community’s response to species loss, stress and ecological restoration.
This initial stage of the research will cover 12 cities across the UK, including Bristol, Reading, Leeds and Edinburgh.
The research is funded by the Pollinator Initiative – The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, NERC, Defra, The Welcome Trust and the Scottish Government.
Comments(3)
g5wq
says...
10:32am Mon 30 May 11
seems to me its all block paving , gravel , fenced in and decking these days .
low maintenance , or is it just plain lazy and cannot be bothered to trim the hedge or cut the grass ?? .
i dont think many people actually do any real work these days , they all sit on bums pushing a mouse around the table and moan about how hard done by they are .
thats half the reason why our wildlife is suffering , because we are messing up their environment for our own selfishness , greed and idleness .
Robfm
says...
11:43am Mon 30 May 11
Robfm says...
10:19am Mon 30 May 11
Window boxes with the right plants all help apparently.
Of course the number favourite cause in their decline is 'cell phones' apparently according to some.