Reading Team
Dr Deepa Senapathi – Principal Investigator
Dr Deepa Senapathi’s research focuses on the impacts of environmental change on biodiversity and ecosystem services. To date, she has worked in both tropical and temperate systems and assessed the effects of climate change and land-use change on avian populations and insect pollinator communities. Dr Senapathi also works as a knowledge exchange fellow with different stakeholder communities including policymakers, non-government organisations, delivery agencies and land managers. You can learn more about Dr Senapathi’s research here.
Professor Simmon Potts – Co-Investigator
Professor Simon Potts’ areas of interest include; understanding the relationships between land use, biodiversity and ecosystem services, food security: role of biodiversity and ecosystem services in food production, developing evidence-based adaptation and mitigation options for policy and management applications, conservation of pollinators and sustainable management of pollination services. Find out more about Professor Potts’ research here.
Dr Michael Garrett – Co-Investigator
Dr Michael Garrett’s research focuses on invertebrate ecology in the agri-environment and primarily the impacts of farming practice and land management on the ecosystem services of pest control and pollination underpinning crop production. He has worked in a number of cropping systems including arable, soft fruit and top fruit production and his research is applied and often industry-funded. You can find out more about Dr Garrett’s research here.
Dr Tom Breeze – Co-Investigator
Dr Tom Breeze is a research fellow working on the economic and social impacts of biodiversity loss. His work spans a variety of topics, from the economic benefits of biodiversity management and monitoring, to the resilience of food systems to pollinator losses. Tom also works on the Horizon 2020 project EuropaBON and the GFS Transforming Food Systems Project FoodSEqual
Dr Selvakumar Dhandapani – Post Doctoral Research Assistant (PDRA)
Dr Selvakumar Dhandapani’s past research was primarily focused on the impacts of anthropogenic land-use changes and different oil palm cropping systems on biodiversity, peat biogeochemistry, microbial communities, and greenhouse gas emissions, and their complex interactions in tropical peatlands. Dr Dhandapani has fieldwork experience in 4 different countries covering different tropical and temperate ecosystems. He is interested in ecological, social and biodiversity impacts of global land-use changes and how scientific evidence can inform long term management of both natural and agricultural ecosystems around the world.
Dr Bryony Willcox – Postdoctoral Research Assistant
Dr Bryony Willcox’s research focuses on the biodiversity that provide ecosystem services, such as pollination and natural pest control, in agricultural systems. Areas of interest include how farming practices and land use management impact on insect communities, service provisioning and crop outcomes and how data from remote sensing can be incorporated into this research to improve our understanding and modelling capabilities. She has worked in several crop systems in temperate and tropical regions, and most recently within smallholder communities exploring how ecological intensification can enhance biodiversity and livelihoods.