1.  Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services in Agricultural Landscapes

Many plant and animal species live in and/or use resources from agricultural landscapes.  We are interested in understanding which taxa live in these landscapes and how they use these landscapes.  We are especially interested in how biodiversity can provide ecosystem services within modified systems where we obtain much of our food from.  Our group studies biodiversity and ecosystem services across a variety of agricultural landscapes in Australia, including fruit orchards, grazing landscapes and field crops. This work is funded by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship grant FT210100851.

2.  Pollinator Identity and Ecology

Pollinator communities include native and introduced bees, flies, beetles, moths, butterflies, and birds, as well as other taxa. These taxa provide pollination services for up to 87.5% of all flowering plants and 75% of the leading global food crops. We are interested in finding out which pollinators visit which crops in a range of agroecosystems. This project is supported by funding from the Australian Government Department of Agriculture and Water resources, Horticulture Innovation Australia and AgriFutures as part of the Rural R&D for Profit Programme. Previous funding for earlier work was obtained from the Ian Potter Foundation.

3. Pollination in Protected Cropping Systems

Protective covers (i.e. glasshouses, netting enclosures and polytunnels) are increasingly being used in crop production to enhance crop quality, yield and production efficiency. However, the majority of protected crops require insect pollinators to achieve optimal pollination and there remains little consensus about how best to manage pollinators and crop pollination in these environments. This project aims to better understand pollinator behaviour and health in protected cropping systems. This project is being delivered by Hort Innovation – with support from the Australian Government Department of Agriculture and Water Resources as part of its Rural R&D for Profit program – and other partners including the University of New England.

4.  The Mechanisms Underlying Crop Pollinator Effectiveness

Maximally effective pollination results from a complex assortment of factors that influence the pollination process before and after pollen deposition. The effectiveness of individual pollinators is determined by the combined outcomes of the amount, quality and timing of the pollen transferred which is strongly related to pollinator foraging behaviour, morphology and density. Variation in the identity and spatial and temporal structuring of plant and pollinator communities further affect effective pollination, impacting pollen availability and post-pollination factors, such as pollen-pistil and/or pollen-pollen interactions on the stigma. Pollination failure can thus result from problems at any or all of these stages of pollen transfer. This project was funded by the Australian Research Council via a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) awarded to Romina Rader (DE170101349).

Our lab is based at the University of New England, Armidale NSW Australia.