Mr Thomas Oliver
Overview
I have a lifelong love of bees thanks to my grandparents. They were beekeepers for more than fifty years, becoming head honey judges at the Shrewsbury Flower Show, producing a film on the history of beekeeping and ultimately passing their passion and knowledge on to me. At the age of fourteen, they handed me my first bee suit, and I have been an avid beekeeper ever since. I have recently completed my MRes at Royal Holloway, where I studied the nutritional requirements of bumblebee queens post hibernation. Alongside my studies, I maintained fourteen hives across four separate sites in central London as part of my own small urban beekeeping business and was able to use my position as house beekeeper on the popular television programme, This Morning, to promote awareness of the plight of pollinators to a broad audience.
Research project:
The aim of my PhD is to quantify the dispersal ability of specific insects and how these organisms navigate through the environment to allow us to predict how individual species will cope with land use changes. I will achieve this through the use of state-of-the-art drone tracking technology at Rothamsted Research in Hertforshire to collect flight data of bumblebees and other important pollinator species.
Qualifications
- MSc: Biological Sciences Masters by Research
Royal Holloway, 2017–2018 - BSc: Biological Sciences (BSc)
University of Westminster, London, 2014–2017
Publications
2021
- PublishedAgrochemicals interact synergistically to increase bee mortality
Siviter, H., Bailes, E., Martin, C. D., Oliver, T., Koricheva, J., Leadbetter, E. & Brown, M. J. F., 9 Aug 2021, In: Nature.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
2019
- UnpublishedWhat does the queen eat? - Determining the nutritional intake targets of Bombus terrestris and Bombus pascuorum queens
Oliver, T. & Brown, M., 2019, (Unpublished).
Research output: Contribution to conference › Poster
Activities
2019
- Using drones to track bees
Insect telemetry involves the use of tracking technology to understand invertebrate movement and behaviour. Current techniques either rely on a battery powered tag which may impact the flight behaviour of the insect, or a lighter, passive tag used in tandem with a harmonic radar dish which has a tracking range of approximately 500m but is costly. Here we show how a piezoelectric tag used in conjunction with an antennae array carried by a drone can be used to track bees at a landscape scale. Through the use of the drone, it becomes possible to track bees over much greater distances compared to existing tracking techniques at a fraction of the cost. We present preliminary results using a prototype of the antennae array to track bees exposed to pesticides and discuss the wider applications of using drones in insect telemetry.
17 Nov 2019
Activity: Invited talk (Speaker) - Design and analysis of simple experiments
22 Oct 2019 – 6 Nov 2019
Activity: Participation in workshop, seminar, course (Participant) - Using drones to track bee movement at a landscape scale
Presented a 15 minute talk at my DTP's summer conference at Nottingham University.
3 Jul 2019
Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker) - Infohackit training course
Training course on how to use Affinity Designer
17 Jun 2019 – 18 Jun 2019
Activity: Participation in workshop, seminar, course (Participant) - Introduction to statistics and data analysis
Introduction to statistics and data analysis held at Rothamsted
30 Apr 2019 – 2 May 2019
Activity: Participation in workshop, seminar, course (Participant)
2018
- PURE training for PhD students
Training for PhD students for using PURE.
5 Dec 2018
Activity: Participation in workshop, seminar, course (Participant) - What does The Queen eat? - Determining the nutritional intake targets of Bombus terrestris and Bombus pascuorum queens.
Talk given to the Bangor University Entomological Society
15 Nov 2018
Links:
Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker) - Rothamsted PhD cohort training
Cohort building to get to know my PhD cohort based at Rothamsted
7 Nov 2018
Activity: Participation in workshop, seminar, course (Participant) - Royal society publishing workshop
A workshop hosted by the Royal society. It focused on the benefits of being a reviewer and having open acces data.
26 Oct 2018
Activity: Participation in workshop, seminar, course (Participant) - Introduction to impact
A workshop on how the impact our research can have and how to manage and facilitate that impact.
24 Oct 2018
Activity: Participation in workshop, seminar, course (Participant) - R-club
R club focusing on learning when to use and what are functions and loops.
24 Oct 2018
Activity: Participation in workshop, seminar, course (Participant) - R4all training course
5 day training course to learn the basics of R.
28 Jan 2018 – 1 Feb 2018
Activity: Participation in workshop, seminar, course (Participant)