Dr. Ben Alex Woodcock

My work focuses on reducing the impacts of modern agriculture on the wider environment, seeking to understand how we can maintain agricultural productivity while reducing the consequences that this has for wider biodiversity.  This work has focused on how farmers can benefit from ecosystem services such as crop pollination (e.g. provided by bees) and natural pest control (e.g. provided by predatory insects like beetles).  Integrating these species in a sustainable way into farming systems is critical to the long-term viability of UK agriculture, but achieving this is complex depending in part on the creation of semi-natural habitats though agri-environmental schemes (including flower rich field margins and grassland recreation) and the more effective use of pesticides.    In a wider sense I am interested in the drivers of invertebrate biodiversity loss in agricultural systems as well as more widely in the UK and elsewhere. My recent work has focused on the impact of pesticide use for pollinator communities, including work for Defra aiming to develop a long term post regulatory approval indicator of risks for honeybees.   I have worked on projects funded by NERC, DEFRA, Natural England and the Health and Safety Executive as well as for industry looking at the impacts of  neonicotinoid pesticides for Syngenta and Bayer.

I have over 100 publications (including data sets), 90 of which are ISI rated (36 of these being first authorships as well as 4 book chapters).  I currently have an H-index of 39 (SCOPUS) and an RG score of 39.2.  I have published in Science (IF=37.2), TREE (IF=15.9), Nature Communications (IF=12.3), Current Biology (IF=10.8), Ecology Letters (IF=10.7) and PNAS (IF=9.7).  

Public engagement with science

• I was interviewed on the imapact of neonicotinoid pesticides on bees for Womans Hour for hte BBC in 2022. 
• For Powney et al (2019) Nat. Comms describing national scale declines in insect pollinators I was interviewed for BBC 6 o’clock news.
• The Woodcock et al (2017) Science and Woodcock et al (2016) Nature communications paper on wild bee declines has received international media attention (UK, USA, Europe, Japan and Australia) including BBC and ITV TV news reports as well as radio and newspaper coverage.  This was also promoted though online material (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIY-aDM2uMg).  In both cases we appeared on BBC Inside Science.
• Woodcock et al (2017) Science was cited by Michael Gove (Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) as very significant evidence directly contributing to UK policy changes for the use of Neonicotinoids implementing the Nov 2017.
• RSPB Centre for Conservation Science award for best conservation science paper of Pywell et al 2015 (Proc Roy Soc. see below) which describes how farming management can be used to support natural biodiversity to enhance crop production.
• I have written numerous small articles and contributed to work on the impacts of pesticides on bees for the British Bee Keepers Association journal as well as being an invited speaker presenting at their Annual meeting (Oct 2017) talking about neonicotinoid impacts on bees.
• Public Policy Exchange Event ‘Promoting community partnership: tackling the decline of pollinating insects in the UK’ (Sept 2016) invited tall
• Large scale public engagement project asking bee keepers to provide honey samples from which we will assess neonicotinoid residues.  This project has had wide scale uptake in the bee keeping community and has been pushed as important in several Bee Keeping journals. 
• I regulatory give invited talks for a scientific audience, as well as those targeted at the general public (e.g. natural history societies), farmers (e.g. LEAF Linking Environment & Farming technical field day, AHDB farmer meetings), bee keeper associations (e.g. BBKA) on the management of agricultural systems for biodiversity.  I have appeared on pod casts for the farming community (e.g. The Crop it Like it’s Hot Podcast 1/10/2020). Presented at the European Parliament Greening Partnership Day (16/10/2012) at the as well as being involved in public science events like the BioBlitz.  

Key research projects

• • 2020 onwards.  Monitoring pollinators in French national parks (Vanoise & Parc National de Forêts).  POLLINIS.
  • 2020 onwards.  National Honey Monitoring Scheme and its use in monitoring agrochemicals (PN0806).
  • 2020-2023.  WP-lead (CoI) NERC GLobal Insect Threat-Response Synthesis (GLiTRS): a comprehensive and predictive assessment of the pattern and consequences of insect declines
  • 2020-2023 (CoI) NERC Restoring Resilient Ecosystems (RestREco NE/V006444/1).
  • 2019- 2022 WP-lead (CoI) NERC Newton Grant ‘Safeguarding pollination services in a changing environment (SURPASS2).
  • 2018- 2022 WP-Lead (CoI) NERC Does the discharge of chemicals to the environment harm wildlife populations? (CHEMPOP
  • 2018- 2022 WP-lead (CoI) NERC Classic and temporal mixture synergisms in terrestrial ecosystems – Prevalence, mechanisms and impacts (CHEM-Mixtures NE/S000224/1 and NE/S000224/2
  • The NERC / BBSRC joint funded ASSIST project run in collaboration with Rothamsted Research and the British Geological Survey aiming to reconcile modern agriculture management to achieve sustainable intensification of crop production (2016  - onwards)
  • The impact of neonicotinoid pesticides on honeybees and wild bees (2014-2016).  I am involved in Syngenta and Bayer Cropsciences industry funded research into the impacts of neonicotinoid pesticides on bees. 
  • Grassland Restoration for Environmental and Ecological Networks - GREEN project (2014-15): Evaluating grasslands restored through agri-environment schemes (ECM6418).

Listen to Ben explain more about his research:

2008-Present:  Biodiversity & Conservation Management Group, Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Wallingford, UK
2002-2008: Research Fellow at Centre for Agri-Environmental Research (University of Reading).
May –September 2001 Research assistant on the EU funded BioAssess project developing biodiversity assessment tools from a range of plant and animal taxa.
March 2001 Research assistant on the EU funded Environmental Chain Network (ECN) project.
June-August 2000 Research assistant on the Ecological Dynamics and Genes (EDGE) project carrying out insect-virus bioassays and insect feeding trials.