Nicholas Tew

Nicholas Tew will talk about the Role of Gardens in Supporting Insect Pollinators

Nicholas Tew is a PhD student at the University of Bristol working in Professor Jane Memmott’s community ecology group. His research focuses on the supply of floral resources for insect pollinators in urban areas. Previously, he worked on the impact of neonicotinoid pesticides on bumblebee foraging behaviour as part of his master’s at Imperial College and web building in orb spiders at the University of Oxford during his undergraduate degree. In his spare time, he enjoys gardening on his allotment and hiking in the countryside.

An ashy mining bee feeding from a window-box

Important pollinator habitats like hay meadows have declined widely in the UK countryside, while at the same time urban areas have been expanding. Residential gardens are the primary greenspace in our towns and cities, covering 30% of all urban land and, at a national scale, more than half a million hectares (an area the size of Norfolk). Gardens are fascinating habitats to study as they contain unnatural assemblages of plant species thrown together haphazardly by gardeners, dominated by non-natives and highly-modified horticultural cultivars. Research from my PhD shows how important gardens are in providing food for foraging pollinators and how they could be a lifeline for species that are struggling to cope in intensively-managed agricultural landscapes.