Dr Jacobus Biesmeijer

MSc, PhD, Utrecht
RCUK Academic Research Fellow
Institute of Integrative and Comparative Biology

Background: I am Dutch and obtained my MSc in Tropical Ecology and my PhD in Behavioural Ecology from Utrecht University (NL). After a couple of years at Cornell University (NY), I came to the University of Leeds to work within the Sixth Framework EU-project ALARM on assessing large-scale risks for biodiversity.

Office: Miall 10.24
Phone: +44(0) 113 34 32815
Email: email address for Dr Jacobus Biesmeijer 

Lab: A member of the Kunin group

Publications

List Dr Biesmeijer's Publications


Research Interests

Ecology and behaviour of temperate and tropical pollinators, particularly bees (stingless bees, honey bees) and hoverflies.

My first line of research is the interaction between plants and pollinators both in Europe and in the Neotropics (mainly Brazil). Within the EU-ALARM-project my role is to repeat historical observations of plant-pollinator interactions. This allows us to assess whether and how things have changed over the last century and which factors (climate change, land use change or others) might be responsible for these changes. With colleagues from the University of Sao Paulo I study (social) bee - food plant relationships in Brazilian habitats.

My second line of research concerns the behavioural ecology of social bees. I am mostly interested in unravelling how hundreds of poorly-informed worker bees are capable of coordinated and seemingly intelligent collective behaviour. My work has recently concentrated on collective foraging behaviour and community ecology in stingless bees (Costa Rica and Brazil) and on dance communication in honey bees