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What links a research centre in Kenya and a Scottish Agricultural college? After all, both places are not only physically distant but also unmatched in terms of geography, climate and species. Yet despite the obvious disparities, there is one common issue that unites not only these two institutions and countries, but virtually every land mass in the world.
Insects...
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A Buff-Tailed Bumblebee on Vetch. It is insects such as these upon which much of the world's agriculture relies, but some species are disappearing fast, outpaced by changes in land use, pesticides and disease.
Like them or loathe them, insects are not there simply to annoy us (as with the Scottish midge), nor are they there just to wonder at and delight (like the amazing migration of the Monarch Butterfly), although they may well do all these things.
The simple fact is that we need insects to produce our food. Without the myriad swarms and their ability to pollinate (fertilise) plants, this will impact not just the variety of foods we consume but could also global food security. Rebecca Riley, senior lawyer at NRDC (National Resources Defense Council), an environmental charity, summarises one of the issues:
"Bees are a really critical part of our food system," she says in one of her blog posts.
"One out of every three bites of food we eat, every day, every week, is dependent on bees for pollination. That's a whole different range of foods, from fruits to nuts to vegetables. Things like almonds are heavily dependent on bees for pollination, tomatoes, pumpkins, blueberries."
And the problem? Bees are in decline worldwide. Some studies estimate a loss of up to 59% of managed bee colonies in the United States within the 58 years to 2007, and up to 25% of European bees in just twenty years. These worrying figures do not include other pollinator species in decline like moths and butterflies, which also pollinate our crops.
A 2019 article in a national newspaper suggested a 2.5% loss of insect biomass per year – a staggering figure which, the article noted, could lead to a complete loss of all insects within 100 years. The ramifications for humans as a species are clear. Our need to understand what is going on with our planet has never been more urgent, and this is where specialists like Dr. Lorna Cole of Scotland's Rural College (SRUC) come in. She works as an Agricultural Ecologist, involved in both teaching and research.
But what exactly is an Agricultural Ecologist?
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