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Philip Donkersley

  • Lancaster Environment Centre
Type of address: Postal address.
LEC Building
LA1 4YQ
Lancaster

Email: p.w.donkersley1@lancaster.ac.uk

SUMMARY of research interests (100 words)

Philip is an expert on invertebrate biology, ecological impact, conservation policy and nature’s contributions to people, with seven years' experience of conducting cutting-edge transdisciplinary field and lab research at Lancaster University (LU). Having completed his PhD in 2014, studying pollinator biology from a transdisciplinary perspective, he studies the interactions between insects and their environment from nutritional, microbial and fitness perspectives, studying how the environment, both physical and biological, interacts with pollinator physiology.

Philip undertook a unique research secondment with the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (POST) that ran between 2019-2021 called the Parliamentary Academic Fellowship. The primary output of this fellowship is a flagship Parliamentary briefing document (POSTbrief) to support Parliamentarians with the available evidence during the historic shift in land use policies the UK is facing. During this fellowship, I also delivered seminars on the principles of bridging research and policy across the N8 group of northern universities. These seminars were also complimented by lectures for undergraduate teaching at LU and an article written for The Conversation to explain the POSTBrief content for members of the general public. Following its publication in September 2021, I hosted a Parliamentary launch event for the POSTbrief, with the goal to drive forward a public debate in the House of Lords on the role of sustainable land management as a framework for the future of landscapes in England. In January 2021, in collaboration with the House of Lords Committee Office, a Special Inquiry was formed to gather evidence on Land Use in England.

He has worked around the world, in collaboration with institutes in the USA, Brazil, Panama, Oman, China, Japan and Tanzania. He has developed successful collaborations with researchers from other institutions, demonstrated extensive university teaching experience at a range of levels as lectures, practical demonstrations and student supervision; worked with academic bodies, professional services and student bodies to affect meaningful change to life on campus; and developed considerable management and organisation skills through my contribution to departmental and research group administration.

Philip’s current research is in leading a collaborative research project with LU Engineering department, focusing on bio-inspired engineering solutions to environmental crises. Through this project, he has prototyped a new artificial nest for wild pollinators: BEEOX. The prototype nests enabled running a video livestream of life inside a wild bumblebee nest – the first of its kind worldwide. Over the course of national lockdown in the UK, Philip set up and ran a series of internet live-streams recording life inside the bumblebee nest, broadcast to Youtube. This stream and nestbox received media coverage in the iPaper. He is also leading a project designing a accessibility device for beekeepers and investigating the bioplastics potential for a common honeybee biproduct: propolis.

Philip is also an active public speaker, having presented his research at the Lancaster Library Festival and Winter Lecture Series. He is a regular member of the Lancaster Bright Club, a unique science stand-up event hosted at the Borough Pub in the city centre annually.

Published research

Philip is at an early stage of his career, and has published research focused at the nexus between micro- and macro-ecological trends, invertebrate ecology and zoology, ecosystem service resilience and the impact of anthropogenic threats. He has established a solid publication record of 18 first-author papers, including the interdisciplinary and multi-institutional collaborative efforts of A One-Health Model for Reversing Honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) Decline; my independent efforts in Trees for bees; the multi-trophic eco-physiological research presented in Bacterial communities associated with honey bee food stores are correlated with land use and Nutritional composition of honey bee food stores varies with its floral composition. Over the last three years of my post-doctoral career, he has secured £150,000 in research funding from four sources: ESRC, EPSRC, British Beekeepers Association and the Waitrose Research Fund.

Research

Philip has worked on four research projects to date:

  • PhD: Causes and consequences of variation in the nutrition and endemic microflora of food stores in managed honey bees (Apis mellifera L.)
  • Managing grassland diversity for multiple ecosystem services.
  • Etiology, tolerance and management of diseases of acid lime.
  • Biopesticides for Africa.
  • Parliamentary Academic Fellow: Sustainable Land Management
  • BEEBOX: A novel artificial nest for wild pollinators

Roles

Philip is on the editorial board of Ecology and Evolution, a high impact international journal publishing open access research. Recently he was appointed to the editorial board of Frontiers in Bee Science.

 

Employment

Part-time Senior Teaching Associate

Lancaster Environment Centre

Lancaster University

Lancaster, United Kingdom

1/09/2023 → present

Part-time Senior Teaching Associate

Lancaster Environment Centre

Lancaster University

Lancaster, United Kingdom

3/10/202231/08/2023

Senior Research Associate in Wild Pollinator Nest Design

Research

Lancaster Environment Centre

Lancaster University

Lancaster, United Kingdom

3/10/202231/08/2023

Senior Teaching Associate

Lancaster Environment Centre

Lancaster University

Lancaster, United Kingdom

13/12/202131/05/2022

Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (POST) Academic Fellow

Research

Lancaster Environment Centre

Lancaster University

Lancaster, United Kingdom

4/05/202030/10/2021

Honorary Researcher

Honorary

Lancaster Environment Centre

Lancaster University

Lancaster, United Kingdom

1/03/20201/03/2021

Senior Research Associate

Research

Lancaster Environment Centre

Lancaster University

Lancaster, United Kingdom

14/08/201729/02/2020

Ecosystems Services Support Technician

Technical

Lancaster Environment Centre

Lancaster University

Lancaster, United Kingdom

16/06/20141/08/2015

PhD, Causes and Consequences of Variation in the Nutrition and Endemic Microflora of Food Stores in Managed Honey Bees

Lancaster Environment Centre

Lancaster University

Lancaster, United Kingdom

Supervised by: Kenneth Wilson, Roger William Pickup, Kevin Christopher Jones

1/10/20107/08/2014

Research outputs

Additive Manufacturing as an Enabler of Environmental Solutions to Address Food Security

Roberts, J., Donkersley, P., Ashmore, L. & Rennie, A., 30/07/2023, Springer Tracts in Additive Manufacturing: Proceedings of CASICAM 2022. Zarbane, K. & Beidouri, Z. (eds.). Cham: Springer Nature, p. 287-297 11 p. (Springer Tracts in Additive Manufacturing).

A little does a lot: Can small-scale planting for pollinators make a difference?

Donkersley, P., Bloom, E. & Crowder, D., 28/02/2023, In: Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment. 343, 10 p., 108254.

Gut microbial community supplementation and reduction modulates African armyworm susceptibility to a baculovirus

Donkersley, P., Rice, A., Graham, R. I. & Wilson, K., 31/01/2023, In: FEMS Microbiology Ecology. 99, 1, 11 p., fiac147.

Global insect decline is the result of wilful political failure: A battle plan for entomology

Donkersley, P., Ashton, L., Lamarre, G. P. A. & Segar, S., 12/10/2022, In: Ecology and Evolution. 12, 10, 13 p., e9417.

The distribution of covert microbial natural enemies of a globally invasive crop pest, fall armyworm, in Africa: enemy-release and spillover events

Withers, A. J., Rice, A., de Boer, J., Donkersley, P., Pearson, A. J., Chipabika, G., Karangwa, P., Uzayisenga, B., Mensah, B. A., Mensah, S. A., Nkunika, P. O. Y., Kachigamba, D., Smith, J. A., Jones, C. M. & Wilson, K., 30/09/2022, In: Journal of Animal Ecology. 91, 9, p. 1826-1841 16 p.

Sustainable land management: managing land better for environmental benefits

Donkersley, P., Carver, L. & Wentworth, J., 28/09/2021, London: The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. 109 p.

Japanese honeybees (Apis cerana japonica Radoszkowski, 1877) may be resilient to land use change

Donkersley, P., Covell, L. & Ota, T., 30/07/2021, In: Insects. 12, 8, insects12080685 .

Analysis of phototactic responses in Spodoptera frugiperda using Helicoverpa armigera as control

LIU, Y-J., ZHANG, D-D., YANG, L-Y., DONG, Y-H., LIANG, G-M., Donkersley, P., REN, G-W., XU, P-J. & WU, K-M., 31/03/2021, In: Journal of Integrative Agriculture. 20, 3, p. 821-828 8 p.

The role of STAT3/p53 and PI3K-Akt-mTOR signaling pathway on DEHP-induced reproductive toxicity in pubertal male rat

Fu, G., Dai, J., Li, Z., Chen, F., Liu, L., Yi, L., Teng, Z., Quan, C., Zhang, L., Zhou, T., Donkersley, P., Song, S. & Shi, Y., 1/10/2020, In: Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology. 404, 11 p., 115151.

A One-Health Model for Reversing Honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) Decline

Donkersley, P., Elsner-Adams, E. & Maderson, S., 27/08/2020, In: Veterinary Sciences. 7, 3, 14 p., 119.

Microbial symbioses and host nutrition

Donkersley, P., Robinson, S., Duetsch, E. K. & Gibbons, A. T., 31/03/2020, Microbiomes of Soils, Plants and Animals. Antwis, R. E., Harrison, X. A. & Cox, M. J. (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 78-97 20 p.

Up-regulation of cryptochrome 1 gene expression in cotton bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera) during migration over the Bohai Sea

Yang, L., Liu, Y., Donkersley, P. & Xu, P., 15/11/2019, In: Peerj. 2019, 11, 15 p.

Correction to: Biological, environmental and socioeconomic threats to citrus lime production (Journal of Plant Diseases and Protection, (2018), 125, 4, (339-356), 10.1007/s41348-018-0160-x)

Donkersley, P., Silva, F. W. S., Carvalho, C. M., Al-Sadi, A. M. & Elliot, S. L., 1/10/2019, In: Journal of Plant Diseases and Protection. 126, 5, p. 489 1 p.

Asymptomatic Phytoplasma Reveal a Novel and Troublesome Infection

Donkersley, P., Silva, F. W. S., Alves, M. S., Carvalho, C. M., Al-Sadi, A. M. & Elliot, S. L., 28/06/2019, Plant Pathology and Management of Plant Diseases [Working Title]. London: InTech, 20 p.

Preference of the aphid Myzus persicae (Hemiptera: Aphididae) for tobacco plants at specific stages of potato virus Y infection

Liu, J., Liu, Y., Donkersley, P., Dong, Y., Chen, X., Zang, Y., Xu, P. & Ren, G., 3/04/2019, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Archives of Virology.

Trees for Bees

Donkersley, P. W., 1/02/2019, In: Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment. 270-271, p. 79-83 5 p.

Duplication and expression of horizontally transferred polygalacturonase genes is associated with host range expansion of mirid bugs

Xu, P., Lu, B., Liu, J., Chao, J., Donkersley, P., Holdbrook, R. & Lu, Y., 9/01/2019, In: BMC Evolutionary Biology. 19, 1, 9 p., 12.

Witch’s Broom Disease of Lime (Candidatus Phytoplasma aurantifolia): Identifying High-Risk Areas by Climatic Mapping

Donkersley, P. W., Blanford, J. M., Queiroz, R. B., Silva, F. W. S., Carvalho, C. M., Al-Sadi, A. M. & Elliot, S. L., 1/12/2018, In: Journal of Economic Entomology. 111, 6, p. 2553-2561 9 p.

Biological, environmental and socioeconomic threats to citrus lime production

Donkersley, P. W., Silva, F. W. S., Carvalho, C. M., Al-Sadi, A. M. & Elliot, S. L., 08/2018, In: Journal of Plant Diseases and Protection. 125, 4, p. 339-356 18 p.

Bacterial communities associated with honeybee food stores are correlated with land use

Donkersley, P. W., Rhodes, G., Pickup, R. W., Jones, K. C. & Wilson, K., 05/2018, In: Ecology and Evolution. 8, 10, p. 4743-4756 24 p.

Nutritional composition of honey bee food stores vary with floral composition

Donkersley, P., Rhodes, G., Pickup, R. W., Jones, K. C., Power, E. F., Wright, G. A. & Wilson, K., 12/2017, In: Oecologia. 185, 4, p. 749-761 13 p.

Plant Protection: Lime Diseases and Insect Pests

Al-Sadi, A., Queiroz, R., Donkersley, P., Nasehi, A. & Elliot, S., 9/03/2017, CABI Publications. 18 p.

Invasive mutualisms between a plant pathogen and insect vectors in the Middle East and Brazil

Queiroz, R. B., Donkersley, P., Silva, F. N., Al-Mahmmoli, I. H., Al-Sadi, A. M., Carvalho, C. M. & Elliot, S. L., 7/12/2016, In: Royal Society Open Science. 3, 12 p., 160557.

Honeybee nutrition is linked to landscape composition

Donkersley, P., Rhodes, G., Pickup, R., Jones, K. & Wilson, K., 11/2014, In: Ecology and Evolution. 4, 21, p. 4195-4206 12 p.

Causes and consequences of variation in the nutrition and endemic microflora of food stores in managed honey bees (Apis mellifera L.)

Donkersley, P. W., 2014, Lancaster University. 240 p.

Bee conservation: A call for coherence, cohesion and co-operation

Adams, E., Donkersley, P. & Campbell, A., 03/2012, In: Ecos. 33, 1, p. 41-46 6 p.

A meta analysis of spray drift sampling

Donkersley, P. & Nuyttens, D., 07/2011, In: Crop Protection. 30, 7, p. 931-936 6 p.

Activities

Ormskirk Beekeepers invited talk

Philip Donkersley (Speaker) & Jenny Roberts (Speaker)

9/01/2024

Library Festival, an evening of music and conversation

Philip Donkersley (Speaker)

24/09/2022

BEEBOX: Exploring the secret lives of bumblebees

Philip Donkersley (Speaker)

19/03/2022

Bright Club

Philip Donkersley (Speaker)

15/03/2022

Lancaster Bright Club

Philip Donkersley (Speaker)

20/11/2019

Ecology and Evolution (Journal)

Philip Donkersley (Associate Editor)

1/02/2017 → …

Press/Media

Bees feast on fast food

Dr Philip Donkersley

23/10/17

1 item of Media coverage

Five things that you didn’t know about bees and pollen

Dr Philip Donkersley

10/09/15

1 item of Media coverage

Poor diet may contribute to the decline in British bees

Dr Philip Donkersley

25/04/15

1 item of Media coverage