Canterbury researcher wins major national ecology award

Canterbury researcher wins major national ecology award

November 26, 2014

A University of Canterbury researcher has won a major national ecology award for his research into how communities of interacting species respond to environmental changes.

Professor Jason Tylianakis has received the New Zealand Ecological Society’s Te Tohu Taiao award presented annually to experts who have made an outstanding contribution to ecological science in New Zealand.

Professor Tylianakis is a Rutherford Discovery Fellow and a part-time chair in ecology and biodiversity at Imperial College London, and also an investigator in the Allan Wilson Centre.

“It’s humbling to receive this award on behalf of my research group and collaborators, and I’m very grateful to the Society for their support. It is an exciting time in ecological research, as we are beginning to understand how the architecture of interaction networks such as food webs or pollination networks come to exist. We are also learning about the conditions under which biodiversity loss has the greatest impact on ecosystem functioning and services.

“My current research is looking at win-win scenarios to balance agricultural production and conservation. In some cases, this requires knowledge of how species traits and the local environment jointly shape the structure of interaction networks.”

Professor Tylianakis is on the editorial boards of The Journal of Animal Ecology, The New Zealand Journal of Ecology and Malaysian Applied Biology. His work has been highlighted in BBC World Science News, The Guardian, Le Monde and other international media.

He has been concerned that declining bee numbers could impact on New Zealand’s export economy as 80 percent of food production and crops such as kiwifruit, clover, apples, canola and honey could suffer.

“An agricultural economy like ours depends strongly on pollination, and between 60 and 75 percent of all food crops require animal pollination. Wild (feral) honey bees, which have basically been eliminated by the varroa mite in New Zealand, are in decline worldwide.

“We need to manage our agriculture in a way that protects native bees and pollinating flies. We need to figure out ways to reduce our reliance on insecticides and provide some areas of unsprayed, uncultivated habitat with food and nesting sites for insects in agricultural landscapes.”

ENDS

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