Andy Reynolds

Andy is responsible for developing predictive, validated mechanistic models of invertebrate movement patterns over landscape and regional scales. This research underpins Rothamsted Research’s strategic goal of understanding the impact of insects in agriculture, as pests, vectors of disease and pollinators. The work is arousing considerable interest among biologists, physicists and the general public because it is showing how advances made in the novel physics and mathematics of optimal searching, random walks and turbulence can illuminate the evolved, innate ways in which insects search across multiple scales. The research has been reported by Nature, Science, BBC News, BBC Radio, ITV Anglia News, The New York Times, Der Speigel and others. Andy is a theoretical physicist by training. He is showing how advances made in the novel physics and mathematics of optimal searching theory can illuminate the evolved, innate ways in which insects search. He is also investigating how insects disperse long-distances in the atmospheric boundary-layer by using turbulence cues to ascertain advantageous wind directions.