Reet Karise

Reet Karise serves as Associate Professor of Applied Entomology at the Estonian University of Life Sciences within the Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, specifically in the Chair of Plant Health. Her work bridges entomology, agricultural science, and environmental protection through extensive research on pollinator health and pesticide impacts.

• Institution: Estonian University of Life Sciences
• Unit: Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
• Sub-unit: Chair of Plant Health
• Contact: Kreutzwald 5, Tartu, Estonia

Her research focuses on the intersection of agricultural practices and pollinator health, with particular emphasis on pesticide ecotoxicology, bee physiology, and plant-pollinator interactions. Current projects include WildPosh (Pan-European chemical stressor assessment) and EuPPollNet (European plant-pollinator database). She investigates how fungicides and insecticides interact to affect bumblebee respiration, develops novel monitoring techniques like MALDI BeeTyping for bee health diagnostics, and studies landscape-scale impacts of agricultural intensification on pollination services. Her work combines field studies across European agricultural sites with laboratory physiological assessments.

Analysis of her recent publications reveals strong trends in pesticide mixture toxicity (particularly fungicide-insecticide synergies), development of standardized monitoring protocols for pollinator health, and documentation of how land-use changes affect ecosystem services. Her research increasingly incorporates molecular techniques and large-scale European collaborations to address pollinator decline.

Dr. Karise actively contributes to professional development in apiculture through cross-country training surveys and educational materials, including university textbooks on agricultural entomology. Her work extends to practical applications in entomovector technology for biocontrol and sustainable pollination management.

She leads research on semi-natural grassland restoration for biodiversity conservation and investigates how afforestation affects ecosystem services. Her team develops field tools for bee health assessment and examines the relationship between hive debris microbiology and disease prevalence.