Ben Woodcock

Ben Woodcock is an Ecological Entomologist in the Community Ecology Group at CEH Wallingford. He is involved in research that develops applied management solutions to enhancing ecosystems service delivery and biodiversity within arable and grassland ecosystems. This has focused principally on the development of agri-environment schemes, which are the main policy mechanism for changing the management of UK farming systems. His research has included projects for both the UK government (e.g. Defra and Natural England) and private sector (Syngenta).

Although mainly focused on producing applied solutions to biodiversity management issues his research been underpinned by a mechanistic understanding of the competitive interactions and trade-offs between invertebrates and the plant communities. This has been undertaken at a variety of spatial scales, from small scale mesocosms, through farm scale monitoring to landscape scale analysis, as well as analysis of long term, wide scale, historical datasets. He has contributed to research on restoration ecology, ecosystem service delivery (biocontrol and pollination), macro-ecology and mechanisms of co-existence in invertebrate communities.

Ben has been an invited speaker at a number of national and international meetings and is currently an associate editor for both the Journal of Animal Ecology and Animal conservation. He also served on the small projects grant review board for the British Ecological Society. He has over 70 publications of which 49 (27 first authorships) are in ISI rated journals (h-index of 17).