Jane Memmott facts for kids

Jane Memmott is a scientist from the United Kingdom. She studies how living things interact with each other and their environment. This is called ecology. She is also an entomologist, which means she studies insects. Jane Memmott is a professor at the University of Bristol. She is an expert on how insect pollinators, like bees, and plants work together.

Jane Memmott's Education and Career

Jane Memmott went to the University of Leeds in the early 1980s. There, she studied zoology, which is the study of animals. She continued her studies at Leeds and earned her PhD.

Early Research and Fieldwork

For her PhD, she studied tiny sandflies in Costa Rica. After her PhD, she became a postdoctoral researcher. She created the first food webs in tropical places. Food webs show what eats what in an ecosystem. She looked at plants, leaf-miners (insects that live inside leaves), and parasitoids (insects that lay eggs inside other insects). She also researched invasive plants in New Zealand. Invasive plants are species that grow in a new area and can harm the local environment.

Moving to the University of Bristol

In 1996, Jane Memmott became a lecturer at the University of Bristol. A lecturer is like a teacher at a university. In 2012, she became the Head of the School of Biological Sciences. She helped the school move into a new building for Life Sciences.

Understanding Pollinators and Plants

Jane Memmott studies many areas in ecology. These include pollination ecology, which is about how plants are pollinated. She also studies invasion ecology, agro-ecology (how farming affects nature), and restoration ecology (how to bring nature back).

Urban Pollinators Project

One of her important projects is about urban pollinators. This project looks at insects that pollinate plants in cities. Jane Memmott and her team studied insect pollinators in urban areas. They walked along paths that were 1 kilometer long.

They found that private gardens, allotments (small plots of land for growing food), and community gardens had more insect pollinators. Public parks and roadside areas had fewer pollinators.

Helping Pollinators in Cities

Jane Memmott believes we should help pollinators in cities. She suggests growing areas of wildflowers. Wildflowers have more nectar and pollen than many garden plants. Nectar and pollen are food for pollinators. Her research showed that these wildflower areas give pollinators more food.

Changes in Pollinator Resources Over Time

She also studied how food for insect pollinators has changed. She looked at changes over the last 100 years and over one year. She found that nectar in the UK decreased until the 1970s. This was when farming became more intense. But since then, nectar resources have increased.

She also found that the timing of flowering plants and pollinator flight times might not always match. This means some pollinators might not find food when they need it most.

Pollinators in Farm Areas

Jane Memmott also researches agroecosystems, which are farming areas. Her work showed that there are times when pollinators don't have enough food. This happens in early spring and late summer. Farmers could use this knowledge to plant different wildflowers. This would help pollinators throughout the year.

Honours and Awards

Jane Memmott is a reviewing editor for Science Magazine. This is a very important science magazine.

In 2015, she won the Marsh Ecology Award. This award is given by the Marsh Christian Trust and the British Ecological Society.

In 2018, she gave the Sir John Burnett Memorial Lecture. This was at the National Biodiversity Network conference.

She became President Elect of the British Ecological Society in 2019. She then became President at the start of 2020.

In 2021, she was given the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) award. This was for her work helping insect pollinators and ecology.

In 2023, she was chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Society. This is a very high honour for scientists.