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Dr. Jessica Knapp
Assistant Professor, Botany

Biography

I am an ecologist interested in how agricultural landscapes best support biodiversity and ecosystem functions, especially how pollinators and their multiple stressors (such as habitat loss, pesticides and climate change) affect pollination services and farmers' agricultural resilience. I enjoy interdisciplinary research, and my projects combine ecological field data and model predictions with psychology and economic valuations to understand the uptake and effectiveness of different pollinator conservation practices across Europe (A View Across Fields) and under climate change scenarios (Plan Bee). I am also interested in how agricultural practices expose bees to multiple pesticides and how these effects scale beyond traditional studies focusing on single substances in focal fields. My ecotoxicological research, led by Dr Rundlöf at Lund University, supports the basis for a more realistic, systems-based pollinator pesticide risk assessment that we are helping to define in the IPol-ERA project. Impact-driven, my research is transdisciplinary. I enjoy communicating and disseminating my work to multiple stakeholders: farmers, agricultural industries (levy boards, seed companies), land managers, beekeepers, scientists, and conservation organisations.

Publications and Further Research Outputs

Peer-Reviewed Publications

Jessica L. Knapp, Charlie Nicholson, Ove Jonsson, Joachim de Miranda, Maj Rundlöf, Ecological traits interact with landscape context to determine bees" pesticide risk, Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2023 Journal Article, 2023

James Henty Williams, Adele Bordoni, Agnieszka Bednarska, Alice Pinto, Cátia Ariana Henriques Martins, Dora Henriques, Fabio Sgolastra, Jessica Knapp, João Loureiro, José Paulo Sousa, Kata Gócs, Luna Kondrup Marcussen, Maj Rundlöf, Maria von Post, Mariana Castro, Natasha Mølgaard, Noa Simon, Nuno Capela, Peet Thomsen, Ricardo Casqueiro, Serena Magagnoli, Sheila Holz, Sílvia Castro, Yoko Luise Dupont, Zuzanna Filipiak, Christopher John Topping, Roadmap for action on the environmental risk assessment of chemicals for insect pollinators (IPol"ERA), EFSA Supporting Publications, 2023 Journal Article, 2023 DOI

Angel Giménez-García, Alfonso Allen-Perkins, Ignasi Bartomeus, Stefano Balbi, Jessica L. Knapp, Violeta Hevia, Ben Alex Woodcock, Guy Smagghe, Marcos Miñarro, Maxime Eeraerts, Jonathan F. Colville, Juliana Hipólito, Pablo Cavigliasso, Guiomar Nates-Parra, José M. Herrera, Sarah Cusser, Benno I. Simmons, Volkmar Wolters, Shalene Jha, Breno M. Freitas, Finbarr G. Horgan, Derek R. Artz, C. Sheena Sidhu, Mark Otieno, Virginie Boreux, David J. Biddinger, Alexandra-Maria Klein, Neelendra K. Joshi, Rebecca I. A. Stewart, Matthias Albrecht, Charlie C. Nicholson, Alison D. O'Reilly, David William Crowder, Katherine L. W. Burns, Diego Nicolás Nabaes Jodar, Lucas Alejandro Garibaldi, Louis Sutter, Yoko L. Dupont, Bo Dalsgaard, Jeferson Gabriel da Encarnação Coutinho, Amparo Lázaro, Georg K. S. Andersson, Nigel E. Raine, Smitha Krishnan, Matteo Dainese, Wopke van der Werf, Henrik G. Smith, and Ainhoa Magrach, Pollination supply models from a local to global scale, Web Ecology, 2023 Journal Article, 2023

Allen-Perkins, A. and Magrach, A. and Dainese, M. and Garibaldi, L.A. and Kleijn, D. and Rader, R. and Reilly, J.R. and Winfree, R. and Lundin, O. and McGrady, C.M. and Brittain, C. and Biddinger, D.J. and Artz, D.R. and Elle, E. and Hoffman, G. and Ellis, J.D. and Daniels, J. and Gibbs, J. and Campbell, J.W. and Brokaw, J. and Wilson, J.K. and Mason, K. and Ward, K.L. and Gundersen, K.B. and Bobiwash, K. and Gut, L. and Rowe, L.M. and Boyle, N.K. and Williams, N.M. and Joshi, N.K. and Rothwell, N. and Gillespie, R.L. and Isaacs, R. and Fleischer, S.J. and Peterson, S.S. and Rao, S. and Pitts-Singer, T.L. and Fijen, T. and Boreux, V. and Rundlöf, M. and Viana, B.F. and Klein, A.-M. and Smith, H.G. and Bommarco, R. and Carvalheiro, L.G. and Ricketts, T.H. and Ghazoul, J. and Krishnan, S. and Benjamin, F.E. and Loureiro, J. and Castro, S. and Raine, N.E. and de Groot, G.A. and Horgan, F.G. and Hipólito, J. and Smagghe, G. and Meeus, I. and Eeraerts, M. and Potts, S.G. and Kremen, C. and García, D. and Miñarro, M. and Crowder, D.W. and Pisanty, G. and Mandelik, Y. and Vereecken, N.J. and Leclercq, N. and Weekers, T. and Lindstrom, S.A.M. and Stanley, D.A. and Zaragoza-Trello, C. and Nicholson, C.C. and Scheper, J. and Rad, C. and Marks, E.A.N. and Mota, L. and Danforth, B. and Park, M. and Bezerra, A.D.M. and Freitas, B.M. and Mallinger, R.E. and Oliveira da Silva, F. and Willcox, B. and Ramos, D.L. and D. da Silva e Silva, F. and Lázaro, A. and Alomar, D. and González-Estévez, M.A. and Taki, H. and Cariveau, D.P. and Garratt, M.P.D. and Nabaes Jodar, D.N. and Stewart, R.I.A. and Ariza, D. and Pisman, M. and Lichtenberg, E.M. and SchÌepp, C. and Herzog, F. and Entling, M.H. and Dupont, Y.L. and Michener, C.D. and Daily, G.C. and Ehrlich, P.R. and Burns, K.L.W. and Vilà, M. and Robson, A. and Howlett, B. and Blechschmidt, L. and Jauker, F. and Schwarzbach, F. and Nesper, M. and Diekötter, T. and Wolters, V. and Castro, H. and Gaspar, H. and Nault, B.A. and Badenhausser, I. and Petersen, J.D. and Tscharntke, T. and Bretagnolle, V. and Willis Chan, D.S. and Chacoff, N. and Andersson, G.K.S. and Jha, S. and Colville, J.F. and Veldtman, R. and Coutinho, J. and Bianchi, F.J.J.A. and Sutter, L. and Albrecht, M. and Jeanneret, P. and Zou, Y. and Averill, A.L. and Saez, A. and Sciligo, A.R. and Vergara, C.H. and Bloom, E.H. and Oeller, E. and Badano, E.I. and Loeb, G.M. and Grab, H. and Ekroos, J. and Gagic, V. and Cunningham, S.A. and à ström, J. and Cavigliasso, P. and Trillo, A. and Classen, A. and Mauchline, A.L. and Montero-Castaño, A. and Wilby, A. and Woodcock, B.A. and Sidhu, C.S. and Steffan-Dewenter, I. and Vogiatzakis, I.N. and Herrera, J.M. and Otieno, M. and Gikungu, M.W. and Cusser, S.J. and Nauss, T. and Nilsson, L. and Knapp, J. and Ortega-Marcos, J.J. and González, J.A. and Osborne, J.L. and Blanche, R. and Shaw, R.F. and Hevia, V. and Stout, J. and Arthur, A.D. and Blochtein, B. and Szentgyorgyi, H. and Li, J. and Mayfield, M.M. and Woyciechowski, M. and Nunes-Silva, P. and Halinski de Oliveira, R. and Henry, S. and Simmons, B.I. and Dalsgaard, B. and Hansen, K. and Sritongchuay, T. and O'Reilly, A.D. and Chamorro García, F.J. and Nates Parra, G. and Magalhães Pigozo, C. and Bartomeus, I., CropPol: A dynamic, open and global database on crop pollination, Ecology, 103, (3), 2022 Journal Article, 2022 DOI

Jessica L Knapp, Adam Bates, Ove Jonsson, Björn Klatt, Theresia Krausl, Ullrika Sahlin, Glenn P Svensson, Maj Rundlöf, Pollinators, pests and yield: multiple trade-offs from insecticide use in a mass-flowering crop, Journal of Applied Ecology, 2022 Journal Article, 2022 URL

Vanderplanck M, Michez D, Albrecht M, Attridge E, Babin A, Bottero I, Breeze T, Brown M, Chauzat M-P, Cini E, Costa C, De la Rua P, de Miranda JR, Di Prisco G, Dominik C, Dzul D, Fiordaliso W, Gennaux S, Ghisbain G, Hodge S, Klein A-M, Knapp J, Knauer A, Laurent M, Lefebvre V, Mänd M, Martinet B, Martinez-Lopez V, Medrzycki P, Pereira Peixoto MH, Potts SG, Przybyla K, Raimets R, Rundlöf M, Schweiger O, Senapathi D, Serrano J, Stout JC, Straw EA, Tamburini G, Toktas Y, Gérard M , Monitoring bee health in European agro-ecosystems using wing morphology and fat bodies, One Ecosystem, 6, 2021, pe63653. Journal Article, 2021 URL DOI

Jessica L Knapp, Benjamin B Phillips, Jen Clements, Rosalind F Shaw, Juliet L Osborne, Socio-psychological factors, beyond knowledge, predict people"s engagement in pollinator conservation, People and Nature, 2020 Journal Article, 2020 URL

Jessica L Knapp, Juliet L Osborne, Cucurbits as a model system for crop pollination management, Journal of Pollination Ecology, 2019 Journal Article, 2019 URL

Jessica L Knapp, Rosalind F Shaw, Juliet L Osborne, Pollinator visitation to mass-flowering courgette and co-flowering wild flowers: implications for pollination and bee conservation on farms, Basic and Applied Ecology, 2019 Journal Article, 2019 URL

Jessica L Knapp, Matthias A Becher, Charlotte C Rankin, Grace Twiston-Davies, Juliet L Osborne, Bombus terrestris in a mass-flowering pollinator-dependent crop: A mutualistic relationship?, Ecology and Ecvolution, 2019 Journal Article, 2019 URL

JL Knapp, LJ Bartlett, JL Osborne, Re-evaluating strategies for pollinator-dependent crops: How useful is parthenocarpy?, Journal of Applied Ecology, 2017, p1171 - 1179 Journal Article, 2017 URL

Jessica L Knapp, Juliet L Osborne, Courgette Production: Pollination Demand, Supply, and Value, Journal of economic entomology, 2017 Journal Article, 2017 URL

MA Becher, V Grimm, J Knapp, J Horn, G Twiston-Davies, JL Osborne, BEESCOUT: A model of bee scouting behaviour and a software tool for characterizing nectar/pollen landscapes for BEEHAVE, Ecological modelling , 2016, p126 - 133 Journal Article, 2016 URL

Research Expertise

Projects

  • Title
    • A view across fields: interdisciplinary perspectives for bees in agricultural landscapes
  • Summary
    • Biodiversity conservation must be both functional and sustainable to respond to global environmental change. By modifying environments, humans are critical to this. However, international policy lacks an appreciation beyond the 'rational' (ecology and economic) of what motivates or constrains people's conservation efforts (Fig. 1). We will address this through the lens of pollinator conservation in agricultural systems. First, we will extend and validate an ecological model to generate systematic predictions of two bee species' (with contrasting ecologies) reproductive output and pollination services in different landscape contexts. We will then combine this information with predictors of people's engagement (e.g. perceptions) in conservation with specific practices costs to provide stakeholders (policymakers and farmers) with robust, generalisable, and holistic recommendations for pollinator conservation. Furthermore, we integrate ecological and economic perspectives into a validated ecological-economic model to elucidate how landscape-scale management of high-scoring conservation practices can maximise cost-effectiveness for farmers, policymakers and society. In doing so, we aim to demonstrate how a paradigm shift to an interdisciplinary approach can provide policy-ready solutions to land-use change and ultimately increase engagement in biodiversity conservation.
  • Funding Agency
    • FORMAS: Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development
  • Date From
    • 2023
  • Date To
    • 2027
  • Title
    • Shared Fields: A transdisciplinary approach for functional and sustainable pesticide reduction
  • Summary
    • Agricultural landscapes are subject to competing demands because of their benefits to people and nature. However, production goals have been prioritised at the expense of other benefits, including biodiversity and ecosystem services, such as pollinators and pollination. This has led to agricultural intensification, including widespread pesticide use, resulting in far-reaching, non-target impacts. Recognition of this imbalance from scientists, the public, and regulators has spurred ambitious new targets to reduce pesticide use and risk by 50% across the EU. However, these targets ignore the socio-ecological context of agricultural landscapes and leave the transition of pesticide reduction policy to practice uncertain and undefined against a backdrop of contention. Can we make this policy functional? Can we make it sustainable? For people and pollinators? Shared Fields will advance and transcend current disciplinary approaches to reconcile pollinator protection and agricultural production goals by creating novel methodologies and data that improve our understanding of pure science, policy, and practice. Taking a transdisciplinary, systems-based approach, I directly tackle scientific unknowns, including elucidating pollinators" population-level responses through whole genome sequencing, incorporating geographic context-dependencies through a replicated landscape design across European countries, and quantifying socio-ecological interactions. Shared Fields will cover unprecedented scales, from people to pollinators and molecules to landscapes, to answer questions that belong together in their shared space of agricultural landscapes. The complexity of this system is ambitious, spanning multiple disciplines over space and time. Still, it can potentially improve pesticide policies across the EU, addressing the fractious and polarised imbalance of agricultural landscapes for the betterment of biodiversity, people today, and future generations.
  • Funding Agency
    • European Research Council
  • Title
    • RESToring POLLinator habitat across European agricultural landscapes based on multi-actor participatory approaches
  • Summary
    • RestPoll is a highly transdisciplinary project aiming to provide society with tools to reverse wild pollinator declines and to position Europe as a global leader in pollinator restoration. RestPoll will, together with stakeholders ranging from individual land managers to governments, co-design, evaluate, and refine measures and cross-sectoral approaches to restore pollinators and their services. The RestPoll consortium combines the expertise of natural and social scientists, NGOs, businesses, and ministries. Stakeholders along the food value chain will be engaged through newly developed participatory approaches at diverse social, ecological, and political scales. Central to RestPoll is the establishment of a Europe-wide network of pollinator restoration case-study areas and Living Labs (LL), which are unique hubs for experimentation, demonstration, and mutual learning. RestPoll aims to position Europe as a global leader and set the future agenda for pollinator restoration worldwide. The transdisciplinary RestPoll consortium will develop, test, evaluate and refine cross-sectoral pollinator restoration approaches to conserve biodiversity and to benefit nature and society. To restore wild pollinator diversity and their vital pollination services, RestPoll will co-design measures with different stakeholders (ranging from individual land managers to governments) at various spatial scales (field, farm, landscape, European scales), in agricultural landscapes that are dominated by intensively managed crops or grasslands. Our holistic approach, informed by cutting-edge transdisciplinary research, will integrate stakeholders and actors at multiple levels as well as natural and social science disciplines to engage in participatory planning and development of new business models. Learning outcomes will be disseminated by regional to European multi-actor partners and collaborators, which will ensure impact beyond the end of the project.
  • Funding Agency
    • Horizon Europe
  • Title
    • Plan Bee: interdisciplinary pollinator conservation for changing agricultural landscapes
  • Summary
    • Biodiversity conservation must be ecologically effective and socially sustainable to mitigate environmental change, now and in the future. We will address this through a lens of bee conservation in agricultural systems, where multiple drivers such as habitat loss, climate change and pesticide risk threaten bees and pollination services. Our project will extend our ecological model to generate predictions of bees' reproductive output and pollination services in response to habitat loss and climate change. We will test these drivers in isolation and combination to improve the assessment of the combined effects of these multiple drivers on biodiversity. We will then use our ecological model to explore strategies to handle these combined effects - pollinator conservation practices, to fight the twin challenges of habitat loss and climate change in agricultural systems. Finally, we combine this information with people's intent to implement these conservation practices to identify synergies (e.g. increased bee populations and crop pollination services) or trade-offs (e.g. increased bee populations at a cost to the farmer) that may facilitate or impede future bee conservation efforts. Thus, we aim to demonstrate how a paradigm shift to an interdisciplinary approach can provide policy-ready solutions to environmental change and ultimately increase engagement in biodiversity conservation.
  • Funding Agency
    • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate
  • Date From
    • 2023
  • Date To
    • 2024

Recognition

Representations

Member of IPolERA - Advancing the Environmental Risk Assessment of Chemicals to Better Protect Insect Pollinators. A working group producing a roadmap (consensus document) on how to advance pollinator risk assessment. 2023

Guest editor BMC Ecology and Evolution 'Agroecology: protecting, restoring, and promoting biodiversity' 2023

Associate editor the Journal of Pollination Ecology 2023

Associate editor of Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. 2023

Memberships

Royal Entomological Society 2023