Nicholas Tew

I am a PhD student based in the Community Ecology group with interests in species interactions, urban ecology and conservation. My PhD is part of the NERC GW4+ Doctoral Training Partnership and is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and the Royal Horticultural Society.

Urban ecology is a growing field, with an increasing number of scientists aiming to understand how organisms respond to urbanisation, which drives rapid and extreme land use change. Recent studies have found that insect pollinators are relatively tolerant to urbanisation, with some taxa even more successful in towns and cities than the agriculturally dominated countryside.

My research aims to quantify the availability of food (floral resources) for pollinators in urban areas to gain a deeper understanding of their responses to land use change driven by urban development. This information is vital in informing evidence-based conservation and developing management strategies to help insect pollinators, which are in widespread decline.