The Environmental Group invited Dr Kelly Martinou for a meeting at the Akrotiri Environmental Centre on 29th May 2019. Kelly is the Head Entomologist at the Joint Services Health Unit (JSHU), British Forces Cyprus based in Akrotiri who specializes in “alien” invasive species and mosquitoes in particular.

Kelly was joined by Miss Ioanna Angelidou a post-graduate student at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens University who is currently undertaking her MSc thesis in Akrotiri  at JSHU looking at the impact of non-native and native plants on insect biodiversity. Ioanna is very involved with the Pollinator Monitoring Scheme of Kypros (POMSKy).

Eighteen members of our team joined Ioanna in the gardens of the Centre to help with her project, we all  did flower insect counts, we chose a plant and spent 10 minutes recording every insect we found on that particular plant.

Although the weather was hot we were all prepared with sun hats etc. and all our results were collected by Ioanna for her records.  If you want to take part in this project please visit the following website which will give you details of how you can help -www.ris-ky.info/poms-ky

We all agreed that this  project was fun and extremely interesting. Afterwards we headed back indoors to the air-conditioned laboratory to discuss what we had found, and also to be updated by Kelly on the mosquito situation, following a very wet winter.

-- Mrs Sue Tsirikos, Head of the 3A Environmental/Biodiversity Group