STORRE

It is counter-intuitive that invertebrate shells can induce bone formation yet nacre, or mother of pearl, from marine shells is both osteoinductive and osteointegrative. Nacre is composed of aragonite (calcium carbonate) and induces production of vertebrate bone (calcium phosphate). Exploited by the Mayans for dental implants, this remarkable phenomenon has been confirmed in vitro and in vivo yet the characteristic of nacre that induces bone formation remains unknown. By isolating nacre topog...

* Bumblebee nests are difficult to find in sufficient numbers for well replicated studies. Counts of nest-searching queens in spring and early summer have been used as an indication of preferred nesting habitat, but this relationship has not yet been validated; high densities of nest-searching queens may indicate habitat with few nesting opportunities (meaning that queens have to spend longer looking for them).  * From mid April 2010, queen bumblebees were counted along twenty transects in gr...

Ecosystem function and resilience are compromised when habitats become fragmented due to land-use change. This has led to national and international conservation strategies aimed at restoring habitat extent and improving functional connectivity (i.e. maintaining dispersal processes). However, biodiversity responses to landscape-scale habitat creation and the relative importance of spatial and temporal scales is poorly understood, and there is disagreement over which conservation strategies sh...

Despite considerable interest in bumblebees and their conservation, few data are available on basic life-history parameters such as rates of nest predation and the proportion of wild nests that survive to reproduction. Here, we use a combination of data collected by volunteers and our own direct observations which together describe the fate of 908 bumblebee nests in the UK between 2008 and 2013. Overall, 75% of nests produced gynes, with marked differences between species; the recently arrive...