Principal Investigator: Sheila Colla

Funding: York Research Chair

Term: 2020-2025

The research program over the next five years continues to combine ecology, citizen science, policy and biocultural understanding to better address pollinator conservation and management challenges. The broad objectives are to: investigate differential success of native pollinators subject to multiple environmental stressors; develop new conservation frameworks to incorporate different types of knowledge to better understand and solve conservation challenges; and develop an evidence-based, collaborative, multi-stakeholder national pollinator strategy. The research program aims to add to the basic understanding of ecological requirements, population dynamics and habitat use for native pollinator species but also have implications in understanding differential responses to stressors by co-occurring wildlife species. The project team is implementing recovery strategies and habitat restoration with a much better understanding of the inter-specific differences with respect to vulnerability, ecological needs and behaviour. They are targeting conservation efforts for declining bumblebee species to be more effective and efficient and are creating new interdisciplinary frameworks and methodologies to incorporate and co-produce different types of knowledge and strategies to guide policy development to incorporate scientific evidence in a collaborative way.