Projects

Flowers and pollinators for the buzzing cities

Megvalósítás alatt lévő/Futó projekt

ID: STARTING 150181
Lead researcher: Szigeti, Viktor
Planned duration: 2025-01.01-2028.12.31
Amount of support: 89 904 000 Ft
Funding organisation: NKFIH
Programme: Nemzeti Kutatási, Fejlesztési és Innovációs Alap

Summary:

Pollinators play a fundamental role in nature and human life. Nowadays, the pressure to protect pollinating insects is shifting from farmlands to cities. They can be supported by maintaining semi-natural habitats and introducing novel techniques, such as less frequent mowing, flower sowing, and bee hotels. Through these interventions, cities could offer diverse environments, benefiting both pollinators’ and human well-being. However, the lack of evidence for novel solutions may trigger counterproductive ‘bee washing’ processes. Ecological research on urban pollination is in the spotlight with outstanding public interest. Therefore, researchers, local and (inter)national authorities are under pressure to develop and monitor pollinator-promoting interventions. Our project aims to study urban pollinators by five priorities:

1) explore the effectiveness of pollinator-promoting interventions;

2) disentangle local and landscape-scale factors;

3) develop simple sampling methods;

4) investigate microclimate dependencies;

5) work on European and global-level syntheses.

To achieve these, we are monitoring flowers and pollinators in parks, road verges, and ‘bee pastures’ (in Budapest from 2021); developing novel interventions and a citizen-science mobile application; collaborating in EU-level research. These studies also embrace the ambitious vision of creating multi-functional, resilient, and green infrastructures. Overall, we are a small but emerging team, looking forward, challenging boundaries, and exploring innovative solutions for urban pollinators. This grant offers the opportunity to share captivating stories of cities buzzing with people, flowers, bees and butterflies.