This project will investigate pollinator distribution, spillover, colony fitness, and individual navigation capacity in the agricultural landscape and their relationships with small- vs. large-scale agriculture, forest proximity, and crop type (wheat vs. oilseed rape). The project is divided into four work packages (WPs). In WP1 I will conduct a meta-analysis following a systematic review on how abundances of different pollinator species are related to the gradient from the field edge towards field centre (the edge effect). In WP2 I will study bumblebee colony traffic rate, colony growth rate, queen brood cells, and pollen baskets (consumed food diversity) using DNA meta-barcoding. In WP3 I will use a novel approach combining marking bumblebees with RFID tags with a homing experiment to increase understanding of pollinator movements and navigation capacity in the agricultural landscape. In WP4 I will communicate the ongoing work and results of the project via scientific and popular-science articles, as well as blog posts and other information-sharing channels. The major innovation of this proposal is the combination of methods used in agroecology, movement ecology and landscape ecology. My project includes large-scale fieldwork studies in Hungary and Austria. The study results will enable me to draw more robust conclusions about pollinator distribution, fitness, movements, agroecology, food production, and target the highest-level ecological and multidisciplinary journals. I will target my project results to communicate my findings to a wide audience including consultation with policy makers, stakeholders, agricultural producers and the general public. The project results will also have implications for increasing the effectiveness of agri-environment schemes for biodiversity.

Aquatic ecosystems are currently facing an unprecedented biodiversity crisis linked to human activities and with even worse future scenarios. Among many potential drivers, habitat fragmentation still remains as one of the least understood due to its complexity. Furthermore, its interaction with other local stressors such as salinity remains as a major knowledge gap that hinders long-term conservation. Ponds host high local and regional biodiversity and contribute to important ecosystem functions and services. At the same time, the networks of these priority habitats are disappearing worldwide (50-90% of habitat already lost). However, the impacts of fragmentation and salinity increase on their biodiversity are yet to be unfolded. Meta-Heroes aims to shed light on the role of network connectivity in safeguarding biodiversity against environmental stressors by analysing pond communities in a multidisciplinary approach, combining experimental work (mesocosms), empirical data (long-term dataset) and a simulation framework to asses future scenarios (graph-based models). My supervisor, Dr. Zsófia Horváth, has an excellent background in metacommunity ecology and her and the host offer the most up-to-date EU level facilities for carrying out the proposed research with a unique large-scale mesocosm facility, a long-term biodiversity database, and access to cutting-edge techniques (eDNA-based methods). Meta-Heroes will also benefit from collaboration of top international experts. I will bring my taxonomical and modelling skills as part of the two-way transfer of knowledge. The combination of all these will result in robust novel results, informative for both basic ecology and conservation. Both will be disseminated and communicated to different audiences (scientists, practitioners, general public). Overall, meta-Heroes will represent a key milestone to expand my professional network and scientific toolsets enhancing the development of my career as an independent researcher.

The alarming state of freshwater ecosystems today: Freshwater ecosystems degraded due to barriers / other morphological changes; loss of wetlands / floodplains; over abstraction of surface / ground waters; land management that reduces infiltration / generates pollution! Millions of euros and hours in ecosystem restoration works have made improvements, yet not stemmed the tide of biodiversity loss. The overwhelming complexity and diversity of approaches, the sheer mass of sometimes contradictory data, the frighteningly heavy toll that failures take on public perception of the potential for Europe to succeed, the lack of media understanding of the challenges and our potential to deal with them – all of these demand a multi-pronged, country-by country campaign to consolidate recent scientific advances and innovations and to train the media to communicate them and the evidence that Europe can indeed halt biodiversity loss. EcoAdvance will co-create, through broad consultations and crowdsourcing, a user-friendly Prone2Success Checklist cataloguing the climate, environmental, economic, scientific, technological and human factors, country by country, that can make a difference and how to duplicate them. EcoAdvance will consolidate recent scientific advances, drive media messaging and put a persuasive human face on freshwater ecosystem restoration successes - all from the perspectives of the people who did them, pursued, supported, tested, modified, demonstrated or evaluated them. By identifying and showcasing successful people, science and solutions that are “bending the curve”, EcoAdvance will bring guidance from personal journeys to support current leaders, scientists and decisionmakers who face some of the same challenges and dilemmas the successful have already navigated, as they try to figure out: Will this work? Is it worth the money, time and effort? Is it the right thing to do for our community and our circumstances?

CO-OP4CBD aims to enhance coordination of the EU support to advance the implementation of the CBD, and doing so make more effective use of existing expertise and initiatives. This will lead to greater coherence in the ways in which the EU, its Member States and associated countries identify and draw on available expertise, improved advice and support to a range of CBD processes, and a more coordinated and cooperative approach in the engagement of experts in supporting implementation of other intergovernmental agreements and processes. Therefore the core focus of CO-OP4CBD is to support the increase facilitation of technical and scientific cooperation in European countries and elsewhere. This will be achieved through the implementation of a set of Coordination and Support Actions: 1) building on existing networks of experts and institutions; 2) engaging experts into the CBD processes; 3) supporting the implementation of monitoring, reporting and review; and 4) increasing technical and scientific cooperation. These actions are targeted at and will benefit the EU, its Member States and associated countries. Many actions and outputs of CO-OP4CBD however will be of interest and use to other Parties to the CBD.

Animal and plant microbiome functions can be modulated, and thereby optimized, for sustainable food production. However, the outcome, i.e., the microbial response, can vary greatly depending on (e.g.)Animal and plant microbiome functions can be modulated, and thereby optimized, for sustainable food production. However, the outcome, i.e., the microbial response, can vary greatly depending on (e.g.) the genetic background and developmental stage of the host, and the farming environment. The interactions between the biological process of the host and their microbiome are still only superficially understood, even though microbial interventions have been used for years. This incomplete understanding means that new attempts to improve microbiome functions are both inefficient and costly, and unlikely to hit upon the optimal solutions. An approach that recognizes the intimate biological interactions between host genome and microbiome functions holds the potential to greatly reduce cost and improve the outcome. To that end, FindingPheno will develop a holistic statistical framework to decipher biomolecular interactions between host and microbiome by combining biological knowledge and state-of-the-art statistical methods: structural causal modelling, variable selection, dimensionality reduction and feature detection. We will then apply the framework to case studies from actual food production systems, using a unique multi-omics data set from three biological systems – chicken, salmon and maize – derived from ongoing research projects. In addition, we demonstrate the utility of the framework to obtain biological insights from publicly available data sets from tomato and bees. We expect to show how to improve the effectiveness of microbiome interventions in sustainable food production, and simultaneously, we will offer avenues for quick and easy application of this new approach to other relevant biotechnology-based industries, e.g. enzyme production and fermentation.