![[Dept. of Entomology]](http://njaes.rutgers.edu/_common/images/subheads/entomology.gif "[Dept. of Entomology]"){kind=small}
Current contact info:
e-mail: rwinfree at princeton.edu
phone: (609) 258-6228
Starting September 2008:
Assistant Professor
Department of Entomology
Rutgers, The State University
119 Blake Hall
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
I am a pollination ecologist with research interests in the following areas.
Current Research
Pollination as an ecosystem service
Ecosystem services are economic benefits that nature provides to people. Most ecosystem services are being degraded by human activity, highlighting the importance of understanding the relationships among human disturbance, biodiversity loss, and the loss of ecosystem services. Pollination is a clear example of an ecosystem service because more than half the world’s plant species, and three-quarters of the world’s food crops, require animal-mediated pollination. I use pollination by bees as a model system for investigating hypotheses about ecosystem services generally. For example, does the magnitude and reliability of pollination depend on the number of bee species present, or is pollination largely provided by a small subset of functionally important species? Are multiple bee species complementary to each other in providing pollination, or are they largely redundant? The answers to these questions will increase our understanding of how ecosystem services operate in real landscapes.
Pollinators and land use change
Some scientists are concerned that pollinators may be declining at a global scale. Yet scientists have a limited understanding of how pollinators are affected by human activities such as agriculture, urbanization, logging, and pesticide use. Some studies show pollinators declining sharply in intensively used landscapes, while other studies find that pollinators persist well in or even prefer anthropogenic habitats such as suburban gardens or agricultural fields. What accounts for these differences? How can pollination be maintained in human-dominated systems? I am currently investigating these questions in the Mid-Atlantic USA, where I have found that native pollinators persist well and deliver significant pollination services to crops even in highly developed areas. I am also collaborating in the development of spatially-explicit, resource-based models that draw on field data from around the world to predict pollinator distributions as a function of human land use.
Plant-pollinator relationships
The network of interactions among plants and their pollinators, akin to food webs, provide a powerful tool for investigating questions in ecology and evolution. How are plant-pollinator networks affected by native species extinctions and the invasion of exotic species? What is the role of plant and insect phenology in structuring plant-pollinator networks? These are just two of several ongoing projects I am involved in.
Pollinator conservation and restoration
I use the data I have collected on habitat use by pollinators, plant-pollinator relationships, and the functional importance of particular pollinator species to develop recommendations for pollinator conservation and restoration. I am currently collaborating with Neal Williams (Bryn Mawr College) and the NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) of New Jersey to restore pollinator habitat on >12,000 ha of private land enrolled in Farm Bill programs. I am also developing research-based guidelines for maintaining agricultural pollination by native pollinators.
News Coverage
Defenders of Wildlife magazine
Education and Training
B.A.
Dartmouth College
Ph.D. Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University
Postdoctoral Fellow, Princeton Council on Science and Technology, Princeton University
Postdoctoral Associate,
Dept. Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley
Curriculum vitae
Download my CV
Selected Publications
Winfree, R., N. M. Williams, H. Gaines, J. Ascher, and C. Kremen. 2008. Wild pollinators provide majority of crop visitation across land use gradients in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Journal of Applied Ecology 45: 793-802
Winfree, R., N. M. Williams, J. Dushoff, and C. Kremen. 2007. Wild bees provide insurance against ongoing honey bee losses. Ecology Letters 10: 1105-1113
Greenleaf, S.S., N.M. Williams, R. Winfree and C. Kremen. 2007. Bee foraging ranges and their relationship to body size. Oecologia 153: 589-596
Winfree, R., T. Griswold and C. Kremen. 2007. Effect of human disturbance on bee communities in a forested ecosystem. Conservation Biology 21: 213-223
Kremen, C., N. Williams, M. A. Aizen, B. Gemmill-Herren, G. LeBuhn, R. Minckley, L. Packer, S. G. Potts, T. Roulston, I. Steffan-Dewenter, D. Vazquez, R. Winfree, L. Adams, E. E. Crone, S. S. Greenleaf, T. H. Keitt, A. Klein, J. Regetz, T. Ricketts. 2007. Pollination and other ecosystem services produced by mobile organisms: a conceptual framework for the effects of land use change. Ecology Letters 10: 299-314
Winfree, R., S.K. Robinson, D. Bengali and J. Dushoff. 2006. A Monte Carlo model for estimating the reproduction of a generalist brood parasite across multiple host species. Evolutionary Ecology Research 8: 213-236
Dobson, A., D. Lodge, J. Alder, G. Cumming, J. Keymer, J. McGlade, H. Mooney, J. A. Rusak, O. Sala, V. Wolters, D. Wall, R. Winfree, and M. Xenopoulos. 2006. Habitat loss, trophic collapse and the decline of ecosystem services. Ecology 87: 1915-1924
Winfree, R., J. Dushoff, E. Crone, C. Schultz, R. Budny, N. Williams and C. Kremen. 2005. Testing simple indices of habitat proximity. The American Naturalist 165: 707-717
Chace, J., C. Farmer, R. Winfree, D. Curson, W. Jensen, C. Goguen, and S.K. Robinson. 2005. Cowbird ecology: a review of factors affecting the distribution and abundance of cowbirds across spatial scales. Ornithological Monographs 57: 45-70
Winfree, R. 2004. High offspring survival in an invaded habitat for the brown-headed cowbird. Animal Conservation 7: 445-453
Dobson, A.P., S. Kutz, M. Pascual and R. Winfree. 2003. Pathogens and parasites in a changing climate. Pages 33-38 in L. Hannah and T. Lovejoy, eds, Climate Change and Biodiversity: Synergistic Impacts. Advances in Applied Biodiversity Science 4. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Biodiversity Science, Conservation International
Winfree, R. 1999. Cuckoos, cowbirds, and the persistence of brood parasitism. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 14: 338-343
Active Grants
National Science Foundation collaborative proposal BIO/DEB #0554790 / 0516205, “Community disassembly and ecosystem function: pollination services across agro-natural landscapes,” Co-PI with C. Kremen and N. M. Williams
Promoting sustainable crop pollination by wild bees through farmer outreach and education. With N. M. Williams, Bryn Mawr College. Northeast SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education)
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Watermelon flower in a pollinator exclusion experiment. |
Native bee pollinating a tomato flower. |
Spring beauty (Claytonia virginica), the subject of ongoing research on native plant pollination. |
Links
Academic departments and collaborators I am an Assistant Professor in the
Department of Entomology I also admit graduate students through the Ecology & Evolution Graduate Program I am a Visiting Researcher in the |
Pollinator Information & Conservation Xerxes Society for Invertebrate Conservation Status of Pollinators in North America NRCS pollinator habitat restoration in New Jersey |
Other links My brother Erik Winfree at California Institute of Technology Special issue of Journal of Theoretical Biology honoring my father Arthur Winfree’s work |