Today I had the pleasure of hosting the visit of Professor Mark Brown to the University of Bristol.
It was great to see Mark but his visit was a hectic blend of food, refreshments and a discussion group with graduate students before treating us to a seminar on his work on bumblebee nematodes.
Statement from Natural England on bumblebee licensing for 2015
Natural England has now completed reviewing the responses to our recent public consultation on the licensing of the release of non native bumblebees for the purposes of crop pollination and research. Currently the release of these commercially reared pollinators is permitted under Natural England’s class licence WML-CL22. Defra and Natural England wish to see the use of native commercial bumblebees as the default position for growers and researchers in England.
In light of the risks identified in the recent risk assessment on the release of non native bumblebees, the ability of the bumblebee producers to rear native bumblebees and the fact that many growers have already switched to using native hives, Natural England has decided not to renew class licence WML-CL22 for 2015. The majority of the respondents to our consultation also supported the move to greater use of native bumblebees.
Some respondents did tell us of their concerns about the bumblebee industry not being able to supply enough native bumblebees at the right time to ensure crop pollination. We consider that good forward planning by the industry, suppliers and growers will address many of these concerns. However, we have decided that in the unlikely situation that there is a shortage of native hives we will issue an emergency class licence which will permit growers and researchers to release non native bumblebees when it is not possible to obtain native hives.
Growers and researchers who wish to release non native bumblebees in any other circumstances will need to apply to Natural England for an individual licence under the Wildlife and Countryside Act. Applicants will need to demonstrate a clear need to release non native bumblebees, rather than native bumblebees, as part of the licensing process.
How this change will work
Class licence WML-CL22 will cease on the 31st December 2014. Those few growers who are still using non native bumblebees in January to March 2015 may continue to use them so long as the hives were introduced into the greenhouse / poly-tunnel before 1st January 2015 – ie there will be no need to remove non native hives which are already in use on the 1st January.
With the termination of WML-CL22 all growers and researchers who had previously registered to release non native bumblebees, and had kept this registration active by sending in annual licence returns, will no longer be registered to release non native bumblebees. However, it is still a condition of class licence WML-CL22 that growers and researchers need to send in a licence return if they released non native bumblebees during 2014.
If growers and researchers need to make use of the 2015 emergency class licence they will need to email or ring NE’s Bristol office (contact details will be provided on the class licence which will be available on the government website) at the time that it becomes apparent that their suppliers can not provide them with native hives. It will no longer be possible to register to use this emergency licence at the start of the year in anticipation that a supplier may have difficulty providing enough native hives. The following information will be required:
Natural England will review the use of this emergency class licence to ensure that this is only being used in genuine emergencies. We will take account of the situation that some growers will be in pollination service agreements and may not be able to terminate these agreements. In these circumstances we will seek the reasoning from these service providers as to why they have been unable to supply native hives.
More from Natural England here
More coverage;
Bumblebees face new immigration rules (Buglife – The Invertebrate Conservation Trust)
Response to consultation to permit the release of non native subspecies of the bumblebee (The Bumblebee Conservation Trust)
I’m delighted to find out that I have been shortlisted for the NERC Early Career Impact Award!
NERC is the UK’s main agency for funding and managing research, training and knowledge exchange in the environmental sciences. To mark its 50th anniversary, NERC are hosting their inaugural Impact Awards. The awards recognise and reward NERC-funded researchers whose work has had substantial impact on the economy and society.
My shortlisting is as a result of the work i have been carrying out during and since my PhD, investigating the threats to conservation that the importation of commercially reared bumblebees pose to native bumblebees and honey bees.
I now will have an interview in January followed by an award ceremony where the winner and runnerup will be announced. As part of the ceremony a short video of my work will be shown which will be filmed in December (not a great month to show bumblebees!), so that’s all very exciting and ever so slightly nerve wrecking!!
For more information, see the NERC announcement here
Today i was delighted to be part of an important work group to discuss the role of ‘omics data in assessing adverse effects of chemicals in the environment. The current approach to assessing adverse effects of chemicals in the environment is largely based on a battery of in-vivo study methods and a limited number of accepted in-silico approaches. For most substances the pool of data from which to predict ecosystem effects is limited and often only short term data are available. The EC Scientific Committee Consultation paper ‘Addressing the New Challenges for Risk Assessment’ (2012) highlights some of the main deficiencies of current risk assessment approaches.
Image from Madden et al 2014
The workgroup brought together experts from the academic, industry and regulatory authority communities to discuss and define the role of ‘omics’ techniques as part of the AOP framework to support environmental risk assessment of chemicals, especially those used in consumer products.
It was a very busy day with much discussion with great people and the production of a large body of collaborated knowledge. We hope this will be converted in to a short review on the future of the AOP framework. watch this space!
Back from my first attendance at the International environmental omics synthesis conference (IEOS) with my poster on ‘the genetic basis of salmon migration’ under my arm!
Had a really great time there and the University of Liverpool is a really nice campus. Was good to meet so many new faces and really get a good feel about what direction ‘omics research is heading in.
– Also, conference dinner in a massive greenhouse! brilliant!
Thanks to the conference organiser, Professor F. Falciani, and everyone else who made it such an interesting 3 days
Today i had the pleasure of attending the NERC Biomolecular Analysis Facility (NBAF) workshop on metabolomics.
Metabolomics is the study of chemical processes involving metabolites. Specifically, metabolomics is the “systematic study of the unique chemical fingerprints that specific cellular processes leave behind” and metabolic profiling can give an instantaneous snapshot of the physiology of a particular cell.
Its an area I’ve no experience and went into the workshop with no burning ‘need’ to attend. It turns out this was mostly due to my own ignorance. The applicability of metabolomics research is vast! From parasite to pesticide to stress effects, the things mebaolombics can uncover are astonishing! I’m a complete convert to metabolomics. I just need to come up with that killer metabolomics projects now…and the funding!
Today I started putting the finishing touches on the Sumner Lab website that showcases some of the work my Principal investigator Dr Seirian Sumner and her group have been producing. L Hopefully with help from the rest of the group, we will keep this updates with the groups output!
To find out more, visit www.sumnerlab.co.uk
Mixing with managed bees may be to blame for increased diseases in wild bumblebees, prompting concern for their conservation, scientists have warned. It has been discovered that bumblebees suffer from more parasites when they are collected from around sites using managed bees.
Managed honey bees and bumblebees are frequently used by apiarists and farmers for their honey production or pollination services. The introduction of managed bees can increase the number of pollinators competing for resources in a given area and this can have ramifications to native pollinators.
It feels like its been a long time coming! 4 years of ‘messing about with bees’, the compilation of a 7 chapter thesis, handing it in, a VIVA, some minor corrections and handing in the final, final draft (which by then bore the name ‘Final2_edited3_new_currentX’). I today had the formality of the graduation ceremony. It may have been one of the hottest days of the year but nothing was stopping me from donning my massive green gown on top of my suite.
From Friday to Sunday, academics from the university of Bristol entertained the public of Bristol at the Festival of Nature in Millennium square. In what has been 3 brilliantly warm and sunny days, I’ve been talking about bumblebees and their importance and the threat of parasites to pollinators, wild mammals and even humans!
With live bumblebee colonies, microscopes, slides of parasites, cow themed onesies and live parasites, its been a really fun (and busy!) few days engaging with almost 5,000 people about our research.
Today i start my next Postdoc position. Working in the lab of Dr Seirian Sumner at the University of Bristol, I will be exploring population genetics of various organisms including pollinators. There is plenty of scope for me gain experience with novel molecular techniques to explore new questions in the future so it’s very exciting!
To celebrate a joint meeting on the subject of bee health hosted by the Biochemical Society, the British Ecological Society and the Society for Experimental Biology in January 2014, the BES has compiled this virtual issue on Pollinator Ecology. The included papers are drawn from all five journals and provide examples of the latest research in pollinator ecology from flower visitation and ecosystem services, to the effects of invasive pollinators, agriculture, pesticides and bee pathogens. We hope that this selection of papers will be of interest to researchers and stakeholders in this highly topical field.
The full issue can be found here
The brood in an ant colony are most vulnerable to parasites because their individual defenses are limited, and the nest material in which ants live is also likely to be prone to colonization by potential parasites. Here, we investigate in two ant species whether adult workers use their antimicrobial secretions not only to protect each other but also to sanitize the vulnerable brood and nest material. We find that, in both leaf-cutting ants and weaver ants, the survival of the brood was reduced and the sporulation of parasitic fungi from them increased, when the workers nursing them lacked functional antimicrobial-producing glands. This was the case for both larvae that were experimentally treated with a fungal parasite (Metarhizium) and control larvae which developed infections of an opportunistic fungal parasite (Aspergillus). Similarly, fungi were more likely to grow on the nest material of both ant species if the glands of attending workers were blocked. The results show that the defense of brood and sanitization of nest material are important functions of the antimicrobial secretions of adult ants and that ubiquitous, opportunistic fungi may be a more important driver of the evolution of these defenses than rarer, specialist parasites.
A. bombi from Argentina and Europe share a common, relatively recent origin. The absence of genetic structure across space and host species suggests that A. bombi may be acting as an emergent infectious disease across bee taxa and continents.
Following the completion of my PhD I will now be starting a Postdoc position funded by NERC Knowledge exchange, in partnership with the Bumblebee conservation trust and Natural England. Following the findings of my PhD on the pathogen spillover threat from commercially reared bumblebees, i will be applying those findings to design new screening protocols. Working with regulating bodies and the bumblebee rearing industry this short position is designed to try and establish a standardized, informative screening procedure for industry and conservation bodies to utilize. This position is only a few months long and based at the University of Sussex. Despite the short duration, it offers a great opportunity to apply my findings and further improve the regulations and practices involved in the rearing and importation of commercial bumblebees.
In this new article, i share my findings.
Nosema ceranae, a known Asian parasite of honey bees, implicated in colony losses, is now infecting bumblebees! Following the parasites spread from Asian to European honey bees, Nosema ceranae is now found in most temperate countries.
After using sensitive molecular screening methods on almost 800 wild-caught bumblebees from the UK, I detect the honey bee parasite Nosema ceranae in several bumblebee species.
We find that following infection by this parasite, bumblebees show increased mortality and reduced sensitivity to sucrose (a measure of learning/foraging ability).
Discovering a high prevalence of Nosema ceranae in a range of bumblebees species is alarming and demonstrates the cosmopolitan adaptability of this parasite, spilling over from Asian honey bees to European honeybees and now becoming an emerging danger to bumblebees. Sadly, this also highlights yet another harmful threat faced by declining bumblebee populations.
The work was funded by NERC and the bumblebee conservation trust
My latest results, now published, have gone global with major press associations publishing the worry some findings of parasites in commercially imported bumblebees. This morning, in addition to trending on twitter and being picked up by several local media outlets, were also the top science and Environment story on BBC news!
In addition to this, all major news channels in the UK plus some internationals seem to be highlighting my results, Radio interviews are lined up with BBC Scotland and Local, plus pod casts with Voice of Russia.
A busy day!
Results from my newly published work, The Trojan hives highlights imported dangers to native pollinators. Over a million commercially produced bumblebee colonies are imported annually on a
global scale for the pollination of greenhouse crops. After importation, they interact with
other pollinators, with an associated risk of any parasites they carry infecting and harming
native bees.
Following 2 years of monitoring, my research has shown how the majority of commercial bumblebee hives we purchased in 2011 & 2012 contained harmful parasites.
We found microbial parasites in 77% of the commercially produced bumblebee colonies we purchased from three producers, which were imported on the basis of being free of parasites. Following this, we found that a number of these parasites were infective and detrimental to both bumblebees and honey bees.
The results demonstrate that commercially produced bumblebee colonies carry multiple, infectious parasites that pose a significant risk to other native and managed pollinators. More effective disease detection and management strategies are urgently needed to reduce the pathogen spillover threat from commercially produced bumblebees.
Back from co-supervising the 2013 Zoology/Ecology students in Spain. Despite an unusual lack of crab spiders, students still managed to get enough data for a good project/presentation. We also had projects including Messor Harvesting efficiency, Scorpion territories and competition between Messor Sp. and Tapinoma erraticum.
Returned from a brilliant conference held by the International Union for the Study of Social Insects. So many interesting talks and posters made for a great experience and plenty of new ideas and directions for further research!
Whilst there i presented some work that’s currently in prep for publication. The talk was titled ‘The Trojan Hives’ and i got good feedback and a couple of ideas for improvements to the manuscript.
Back from two conferences in Cambridge organised by the Royal Entomological Society.
The first was a special interest group conference (Infection and Immunity) which was interesting with much of the research being done on well established model systems leaving me a little bitter that so much foundation work is still to be done on the humble bumblebee!
Following this one day meeting, it was over to Ento’12,again hosted by the RES and this was themed on insects in agriculture (paying tribute Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring”). There’s currently some very interesting research being done on pesticide effects on insects, including pollinators and this area seems like it will continue to find worrying findings as more focus is brought upon it.
Whilst there, I presented some work currently in prep for publication and despite talking a little beyond the allotted time, it went down well.
All in all, a busy week meeting lots of new faces and hearing some interesting ideas.
Sometimes, the most desirable tool, is an item of cutlery! Here is a picture of Chris Tranter and I, taking a closer look at some of the local ant colonies. When we weren’t doing this, we had students working on various projects including Messor ant scouting behaviour, forager recruitment in Camponotus ants and arthropod diversity.
On Saturday 11th Feb, David and I climbed to the summit of Mt Kilimanjaro, the highest free standing mountain in the world. Tired and cold, knowing how much we were raising for the ME association kept us going.
Having now got home, uploaded the photos, and recovered from itchy mosquito bites, peeling skin and yearnings for KFC, we’re pleased to have reached our charity target for the ME association! The ME association has received over £1000 in donations plus an additional £195.87 in gift aid from our justgiving page which we find phenomenal and far surpasses our expectations! Thank you all so much for this significant contribution which we hope goes along way to helping ME sufferers and we also hope by doing this, we have further raised awareness for ME/CFS.
The donation page will remain open for a short time so if you wish to further add to our success, then please do so! http://www.justgiving.com/pete-david-kilimanjaro
As some of you know, in Feb 2012 I will be climbing Mt Kilimanjaro which will take 6 days, at an altitude of 19,341ft when no doubt I will be woefully underprepared. I’m doing this to raise money and awareness for sufferers of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which affects around a quarter of a million people in the UK alone.
Like me, some of you know Katie Warwick who is a sufferer, so you will already know a little about the reality of this disease and will understand how worthwhile a cause this is.
Those who haven’t come across this disease before, CFS can be debilitating, causing not just fatigue but also chronic pain. Its causes are still not fully understood and recovering from what can be a long-lasting illness is often based more on management than total cure. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0w9-eQ_fKQ
There’s not a lot I can do to help my friend, or indeed CFS sufferers in general, though it seems in many cases, the Doctors can’t completely help either. What I can do, and will do however is try to raise awareness of the disease. Raising awareness amongst friends and strangers alike and hopefully as I go, I may raise some money for the ME association who will further increase awareness and research into the treatment of CFS.
I have a justgiving page for sponsorship, please, post this link around to help me raise awareness. If you have money to donate too, please do. (http://www.justgiving.com/pete-david-kilimanjaro)
There will soon be an article about this in the ME newsletter and we hope to raise as much as possible before Feb when David and I will climb Kilimanjaro, and I will know, regardless of how tired and painful it gets, it’s nothing compared to what CFS sufferers have to go through.
Please share the link: http://www.justgiving.com/pete-david-kilimanjaro
Here we used the generalist entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium to compare the disease resistance of a species of a weaver ant, Polyrhachis dives, which has lost the metapleural gland, with that of the well-studied leaf-cutting ant Acromyrmex echinatior and two other ant species, Myrmica ruginodis and Formica fusca, all of which have metapleural glands.
It appears that the evolutionary loss of the metapleural gland does not result in reduced disease resistance in P. dives weaver ants, and that this at least in part may be due to the ants having antimicrobial venom and high self-grooming rates. The results therefore emphasise the importance of multiple, complementary mechanisms in the disease resistance of ant societies.
I am back from co-supervising students on the Ecology field trip. Projects this year have included the colony founding success of Polistes wasps, central foraging theory and Wild boar ecology. Altogether making this year really exciting with a lot of ideas for development next year!
Prize: Today I won the cash prize for ‘Best Poster’ at the 2010 Postgraduate Symposium at the University of Leeds!
My poster, titled ‘Pathogen spillover of exotic parasites to native bumblebees’ showcased some of the preliminary data collected over the first year of my PhD.
“The poster sessions were an opportunity for students to present their research and addressed different scientific themes including molecular and cellular biology, structural molecular biology, plant sciences, cardiovascular and sports science, genetics, ecology and evolution and integrative membrane biology.”
Link to the Postgraduate Symposium website
I’m told its tradition to spend the prize money buying my colleagues drinks… You can’t argue with tradition!
Back from co-supervising the 2010 Ecology field course in Spain. With MSc and Bsc projects ranging from oil beatle behaviour to Messor ant aggression, its been a great trip with all the students doing really well!
Press release outlining the main aim of my PhD research
”In a three year Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)- funded study PhD student Pete Graystock will screen native and foreign bumblebees as using advanced molecular techniques to identify parasite DNA. They will also investigate the affects of parasites on bee health.
The research, co-supervised by Professor Dave Goulson and Dr Ben Darvil co-founders of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, will be used to inform conservation strategies and potentially improve screening for imported bees.”
PhD: I’ve embarked on a 3.5 year research PhD investigating pathogen spillover from commercial bumblebees colonies to native bees. Based at the University of Leeds with Dr William Hughes, the work will be done in partnership with the bumblebee conservation trust.
Save the bees!
