Muzafar Hussain

(Funded by HEC Pakistan through Shah Abdul Latif University, Khairpur Pakistan under faculty development programme)

Project title:
An investigation of solitary bees and their habitats in urban settings

email:muzafar.hussain@northampton.ac.uk

Project overview

My project is about pollinator conservation; pollinators are an important constituent of biodiversity and they play a crucial role in ecosystems. About 88% of the flowering plants depend on pollinators to produce fruit and seed (Ollerton et al. 2011). Recent studies have shown clear evidence of pollinator decline and a parallel decline in plants that rely upon them. In urban settings, developments affect the availability of nesting sites for pollinators as well as accessibility and quality of floral resources within the close proximity of nest sites. On other hand, alien plant species are generally introduced in private gardens for aesthetic purposes and can readily integrate into native plant-pollinator networks, possibly resulting in a decline of native pollinators, particularly specialist species. The knowledge of urban solitary bees is scant; on the contrary urbanization is predicted to increase dramatically. Hence, there is need to understand how urban solitary bees react to urban settings.

What I aim to do in this project

This project is focusing on solitary bees as important wild pollinators. I am aiming to locate and identify solitary bees and examine where they live and how they react within urban settings. This project is designed to determine the diversity of solitary bees in an urban core and understand the effects of urbanization on solitary bees by comparing different variables associated with urbanization such as buildings, impervious surfaces, open areas, road traffic, pedestrian traffic etc. I shall make comparisons between the findings of the urban core with other habitats such as nature reserves and new housing developments and also explore how the urban heat island affects solitary bee phenology, including bee emergence and foraging activities.

I shall also identity potential nesting sites for solitary bees, such as old stone walls, wood, and bare soil and floral resource availability in the urban core and assess the effect of abundance of native and non-native plant species on solitary bees. Furthermore, I intend to understand how solitary bees use those patchy resources in an urbanised setting and whether solitary bees move freely across the town areas and make use of those patchy resources dispersed in streets and roadside verges. Finally, I plan to study whether road traffic prevents the movement of bees and keeps them isolated in small population units.

My research and other interests

I am interested in plant-pollinator interactions as this mutualism contributes to maintaining robust ecosystems which can better withstand and recover from a variety of perturbations. This builds upon my Masters degree research which was a study of plant communities on urban “brownfield” sites. Apart from research, I am a father of two and love to play with them. I listen to music and enjoy watching comedy shows on my laptop!