Professor’s research to address plight of the bumblebee

Professor's research to address plight of the bumblebee. The plight of the bumblebee is the guiding passion behind research projects at the University of Sussex led by newly-appointed biologist and conservationist Professor Dave Goulson. Professor Goulson, who is author of A Sting in the Tale (serialised this week as Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4), turned a childhood obsession with wildlife into an academic career that has now brought him to Sussex. One of the UK's most respected conservationists and the founder of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust , Professor Goulson joins the University's School of Life Sciences. In three new major projects funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council (BBSRC) and Defra, Goulson's group will be investigating: factors affecting how many wild bumblebee nests can survive on farms and making farms more bee and wildlife-friendly; iImpacts neonicotinoid pesticides have on bees, looking at how pesticides interfere with foraging behaviour and overall bee colony performance; Professor Goulson's research interest is underscored by the fact that in the past 70 years British bumblebee populations have crashed. In that time two species have become nationally extinct and several other of the 27 species found in Britain are suffering dramatic declines. As he outlines in his book, Professor Goulson's passion to reinstate one of the nationally extinct species - the short-haired bumblebee, once commonly found in the marshes of Kent and now found only in New Zealand - embraces both fundamental research and public engagement, to ensure that the bumblebee is better understood and that it remains a part of the British wildlife landscape.