José Paulo Sousa

I have a background in terrestrial invertebrate ecology and ecotoxicology. Triggered by the latter, I started working with honeybees about 7 years ago, focusing on understanding how external factors (mainly the availability and spatial distribution of flower resources and exposure to pesticides) influence bee colony health. I have coordinated the Portuguese teams in several projects dealing with these topics, funded by different EU programmes: INTERREG (POLL-OLE-GI project), EFSA (Must-B project – data gathering for the Apis-RAM model), H2020 (B-GOOD and ECOSTACK projects) and Horizon Europe (Better-B project). My main interest is to understand how honeybees use the landscape for foraging, linked to the quality of flower resources, and how they are exposed to pesticides during foraging events to assess potential sub-lethal effects. To this respect, besides the legally required ecotoxicological testing, we are also emerging on new techniques (using omics) to unravel the potential effects of low-risk pesticides on honeybees. More recently, my group has been also studying the factor driving the dispersal of Vespa velutina and helping beekeepers to mitigate damages in their colonies (active collaboration, via 3 funded projects, with local and regional authorities to implement harmonized measures for hornet nest control).