About

 

DRUID brings together four of the UK’s foremost institutions working on insect dynamics and monitoring, with a long history of collaboration. Our researchers have played a substantial role in documenting past insect declines, and in helping set research and policy agendas in this area. To know more about the individual partners, follow the institute link. More information on all our collaborators may be obtained from our People page.

    1.  The University of Leeds (UoL) has been a dominant centre of NERC research for over a decade. The team is led by spatial ecologist William Kunin (Project PI), with freshwater ecologists Chris Hassall and Lee Brown, Martin Dallimer of the Sustainability Research Institute, and radar scientists Ryan Neely and Maryna Lukach (Research Co-I).
    2. The University of Reading (UoR) is a global leader in sustainable agriculture research. The team is led by Simon Potts, Director of the Centre for Agri-Environmental Research, with function modeler Tom Oliver and ecological economist Tom Breeze (Research Co-I).
    3. The UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) is a strategic delivery partner for NERC. The team is led by Claire Carvell, Programme coordinator, with Richard Pywell, Head of Biodiversity Research, quantitative ecologist Gary Powney, freshwater ecologist Francois Edwards, LCM lead Dan Morton, Research Co-I Francesca Mancini, and named researchers S Jarvis, C Rowland, R Dunford-Brown and J Redhead.
    4. Rothamsted Research (RR) is a world-leading agricultural research centre, which hosts the Rothamsted Insect Survey (RIS). The team is led by James Bell, Head of the RIS, and includes mathematician Alice Milne and entomologist Chris Shortall (Research Co-I).

 

The highly interdisciplinary nature of the team (entomology, spatial ecology, statistics, modelling, radar science, socio-economics) will provide a wide experiential learning environment for the PDRAs and technicians employed on the project. They will also have opportunities to meet and network with a wide range of stakeholders through the DRUID workshops. Specific expertise available at the host organisations, subcontractors and project partners include:

    • Insect monitoring expertise and samples from Rothamsted Insect Survey, the longest running and most ambitious insect monitoring program on Earth, providing unique access to by-catch, and from UKCEH-based monitoring activities (e.g. PoMS, involving UoR and UoL);
    • Freshwater insect expertise and datasets;
    • Trait dataset expertise and access in UKCEH, UoR and UoL (e.g. BRC, European bee traits);
    • Environmental driver datasets and expertise from UKCEH, UoR, and their ASSIST, UK-SCAPE, SPEED, CHESS, FRAME and ERCITE projects, and from partners EA and Defra;
    • Analytical expertise in cutting-edge methodologies;
    • Spatial modelling and scenarios expertise;
    • Radar entomology expertise and access to NERC BioDar data;
    • Remote sensing and landcover analysis expertise and data access;
    • Ecosystem service valuation and natural capital accounting expertise;
    • Expertise and datasets on birds, bats and fish that depend on insects for food (including key population performance measures) from our partners RSPB, BCT and the Angling Trust;
    • Stakeholder networks and insect data from partners Buglife and Butterfly Conservation.
  • For more details and research outputs from DRUID, see our Research page.