USDA Awards $3.3 Million to UMass Amherst Researcher to Develop Strategies for Protecting Wild Bees in Northeast Farming Areas
Oct. 14, 2011
| Contact: | Daniel Fitzgibbons 413/545-0444 |
AMHERST, Mass. - The U.S. Department of Agriculture today announced that Anne L. Averill of the University of Massachusetts Amherst has been awarded a five-year, $3.3 million grant to study native bee communities, which play a key role in pollinating important crops in the Northeast, such as apples, low-bush blueberries, cranberries and pumpkins.
"Declines in pollinator populations have been highlighted in the news for several years," says Averill, associate professor of insect sciences. "This is especially true for managed honey bees, but is also the case for some species of our wild, native bees. Our research team believes that if the dwindling of pollinators continues, we will be faced with a crisis in crop pollination."
The project, which involves more than a dozen scientists in Maine, New York, Connecticut and Tennessee, is aimed at maintaining a diverse community of native bees, together with managed bees, to ensure the best long-term pollination strategy.
"Our major focus will be on the biology, role and conservation of wild bee communities in farm habitats," says Averill.
The researchers will study how the diversity of pollinators is influenced by factors such as landscape, farm size, pesticide use and crop diversity, and evaluate the impact of known and newly discovered pathogens and parasites on pollinator communities. The goal of the project, says Averill, is to determine which factors are most predictive of wild bee species richness and abundance and develop a solution that incorporates key factors and can be expanded over the course of the research study.
The scientists will also work extensively with the farmer communities who grow the target crops and encourage them to adopt management practices based on the results of the study.
Along with three colleagues at the University of Massachusetts, Averill is working with researchers from the University of Maine, Cornell University, University of Tennessee and the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.
The 29 grants totaling $46 million announced by Kathleen Merrigan, deputy secretary of agriculture, were made through the National Institute of Food and Agriculture through its Specialty Crop Research Initiative, which supports the specialty crop industry by developing and disseminating science-based tools to address the needs of specific crops. Funded projects address five focus areas: improve crop characteristics through plant breeding, genetics and genomics; address threats from pests and diseases; improve production efficiency, productivity and profitability; develop new innovations and technologies and develop methods to improve food safety.
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