April 17, 2013
The seminar will take place from 12:05 to 1 p.m. in Room 1022 of the Life Sciences Addition, corner of Hutchison and Kleiber Hall drives. Assistant professor Neal Williams will host him.
“Bumble bees are major contributors to pollination of crops and wildflowers throughout the temperate northern hemisphere,” Goulson said. “any species have declined, contributing to fears that we might face a 'pollination crisis.' I will discuss the main causes of their declines, which probably vary between regions. In Europe, the primary driver is thought to be habitat loss and other changes associated with intensive farming. In the Americas, declines of some species are likely to be due to impacts of non-native diseases.
“I will then turn to possible links between poor bee health and pesticides, particularly a class of insecticides known as neonicotinoids. A controversy is currently raging on both sides of the Atlantic; I will give my view on the evidence for environmental impacts of these pesticides.”
Goulson received his bachelor’s degree in biology from Oxford University, followed by a doctorate on butterfly ecology at Oxford Brookes University. Subsequently, he lectured in biology for 11 years at the University of Southampton, before moving to Stirling in 2006, and then to Sussex in 2013.
Goulson works mainly on the ecology and conservation of bumble bees. He has published more than 200 scientific articles on the ecology and conservation of insects, with a particular focus on bumblebees. He is the author of Bumblebees; Their Behaviour, Ecology and Conservation, published in 2010 by Oxford University Press, and of A Sting in the Tale, a popular science book about bumble bees, published in 2013 by Jonathan Cape.
Goulson founded the Bumblebee Conservation Trust in 2006, a charity which has grown to 8,000 members.
--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894