; Project Leader – The Insect Survey; Biointeractions and Crop Protection
https://www.rothamsted.ac.uk/our-people/james-bell
James is a quantitative ecologist, Head of the Rothamsted Insect Survey and workpackage leader of Rothamsted’s strategic program Smart Crop Protection. He studies distributional and longitudinal trends of insects and show how these are driven by environmental and climate-driven processes. James’ work is at the cutting edge of migration detection biology and his research has been published in high impact journals, including Nature, Global Change Biology, Nature Climate Change and Ecology Letters. James has key publications in the study of GM crops, pest regulation and effects of human cooperation on the management of insect pests. He has also studied and published on a range of taxa in terrestrial, freshwater and coastal systems, and has conducted fieldwork in both tropical and temperature systems.
James’ key area of expertise is insect ecology, specifically monitoring and surveillance of populations at the landscape scale and beyond. Major themes are climate change, particularly the seasonal timing of biological events, and insect migration, including trends, prediction and biology. He has expertise in modelling time series, particularly from the Rothamsted Insect Survey suction- and light-trap data and radar data. Currently, James is engaged in detecting insect migration responses algorithmically using computer vision and machine learning techniques.