Rothamsted Research
Hyperomyzus lactucae
Rothamsted Research is a BBSRC Institute. It is the largest agricultural research centre in the United Kingdom and almost certainly the oldest agricultural research station in the world. Over its 165 year history, Rothamsted Research has built an international reputation as a centre of excellence for science in support of sustainable land management and its environmental impact. Its scientific research ranges from studies of genetics, biochemistry, cell biology and soil processes to investigations at the ecosystem and landscape scale. It has many long-term ecological datasets of international significance.
Rothamsted’s research programme is organised in five Centres. Work for BICCO-Net falls under the remit of the Centre for Bioenergy and Climate Change, which aims to understand and predict the impacts of climate change on biotic and abiotic components of agro-ecosystems and provide land-based solutions for mitigation and adaptation through carbon-neutral renewable bioenergy crops and sustainable management strategies that retain ecosystem services and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The Rothamsted Insect Survey holds the most comprehensive, standardised datasets on terrestrial invertebrates in the world. These come from the national networks of suction traps and light traps which have been operating for more than 40 years (Harrington and Woiwod, 2007). The suction traps collect daily data on aphids and the light traps on moths, and the data have been used in a wide range of fundamental and applied projects. It is subsets of these data that will be made available to the BICCO-Net project for analysis of changes in phenology, distribution and abundance in relation to climatic and other environmental factors. The suction trap network extends over Europe and recent analyses of 29 key pest species have led to the prediction that phenology will advance on average by 8 days over the next 50 years (Harrington et al., 2007) with abundance increasing in the critical early parts of the growing season when crops are especially susceptible to damage. The light trap data have recently drawn attention to a serious decline in moth abundance throughout the UK (Conrad et al., 2006).
These contrasting conclusions, increases in pests and decreases in species of conservation concern, suggest that species traits may be predictors of change. Rothamsted is part of the EU RUBICODE project and is leading a work package to develop a framework to predict impacts of environment change on ecosystem service delivery, through linkages between traits determining responses to change and traits providing services.
References:
Conrad, K.F., Warren, M.S., Fox, R., Parsons, M.S. and Woiwod, I.P. (2006) Rapid declines in common moths underscore a biodiversity crisis. Biological Conservation 132, 279-291.
Harrington, R. and Woiwod, I. (2007) Foresight from hindsight: the Rothamsted Insect Survey. Outlooks on Pest Management February 2007, 9-14.
Harrington, R. Clark, S.J., Welham, S.J., Verrier, P.J., Denholm, C.H., Hullé, M., Maurice, D., Rounsevell, M.D.A., Cocu, N. and EU EXAMINE Consortium (2007). Environmental change and the phenology of European aphids. Global Change Biology 13, 1550-1564.
