Assessment of the response of pollinator abundance to environmental pressures using structured expert elicitation
Barons, MJ; Hanea, AM; Wright, SK; et al.Baldock, KCR; Bayer-Wilfert, L; Chandler, D; Datta, S; Fannon, J; Hartfield, C; Lucas, A; Ollerton, J; Potts, S; Carreck, N
Date: 2 October 2018
Article
Journal
Journal of Apicultural Research
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Publisher DOI
Abstract
Policymakers often need to rely on experts with disparate fields of expertise when making
policy choices in complex, multi-faceted, dynamic environments such as those dealing with
ecosystem services. For policy-makers wishing to make evidence-based decisions which will
best support pollinator abundance and pollination services, one ...
Policymakers often need to rely on experts with disparate fields of expertise when making
policy choices in complex, multi-faceted, dynamic environments such as those dealing with
ecosystem services. For policy-makers wishing to make evidence-based decisions which will
best support pollinator abundance and pollination services, one of the problems faced is
how to access the information and evidence they need, and how to combine it to formulate
and evaluate candidate policies. This is even more complex when multiple factors provide
influence in combination. The pressures affecting the survival and pollination capabilities of
honey bees (Apis mellifera), wild bees and other pollinators is well documented, but
incomplete. In order to estimate the potential effectiveness of various candidate policy
2
choices, there is an urgent need to quantify the effect of various combinations of factors on
the pollination ecosystem service. Using high quality experimental evidence is the most
robust approach, but key aspects of the system may not be amenable to experimentation or
may be prohibitive based on cost, time and effort. In such cases, it is possible to obtain the
required evidence by using structured expert elicitation, a method for quantitatively
characterizing the state of knowledge about an uncertain quantity. Here we report and
discuss the outputs of the novel use of a structured expert elicitation, designed to quantify
the probability of good pollinator abundance given a variety of weather, disease and habitat
scenarios.
Biosciences - old structure
Collections of Former Colleges
Item views 0
Full item downloads 0