biology

Pat Willmer

Pat Willmer is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Pat Willmer rather than just read about it. In short: Patricia 'Pat' Gillian Willmer is an entomologist and ecologist in the UK. She is emeritus professor of zoology at the University of St Andrews and is an expert in pollination.

Key takeaways

Pat Willmer belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Pat Willmer to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Pat Willmer from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Patricia 'Pat' Gillian Willmer is an entomologist and ecologist in the UK. She is emeritus professor of zoology at the University of St Andrews and is an expert in pollination.

Career and research Willmer studied for a B.A. degree at the University of Cambridge, and then continued to work in Cambridge for her PhD in neurophysiology. Her doctoral work was supervised by John Treherne, and funded by the Science Research Council and New Hall College, Cambridge. Willmer completed her PhD in 1978, and published her work in three papers in the The Journal of Experimental Biology that same year. While her research began in the area of neurobiology she later moved into invertebrate physiology and insect plant interactions. Willmer was a research fellow in Cambridge, and later a lecturer in invertebrate zoology at the University of Oxford, before moving to the University of St Andrews. She has researched pollination biology many years and she supports agricultural environmental schemes such as wildflower strips to support pollinating insects and enhance crop pollination. Some of her interesting findings include flowers can change colour such as the legume Desmodium setigerum which changes from lilac to white to turquoise after being visited by a pollinating bee; and acacia plants that manipulate the ants that defend them, releasing a compound mimicking the ant alarm pheromone when they flower so that pollinating insects such as bees can visit. Willmer was elected to the council of the Linnean Society of London in 2009.

Selected works Bees, ants and wasps: a key to genera of the British Aculeates, published by the Field Studies Council in 1985. Invertebrate Relationships: Patterns in Animal Evolution, published by Cambridge University Press in 1990. Environmental Physiology of Animals, with Graham Stone and Ian Johnston, published by Wiley Blackwell in 2000. Pollination and Floral Ecology, published by Princeton University Press in 2011.

References

External links University of St Andrews profile

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Pat Willmer

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Pat Willmer claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Pat Willmer before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Pat Willmer ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Pat Willmer

In research: Pat Willmer appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Pat Willmer in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Pat Willmer is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 20th-century British scientists, 20th-century British women scientists, 21st-century British scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Pat Willmer outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Pat Willmer in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Pat Willmer means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Pat Willmer out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Pat Willmer in simple terms?

Patricia 'Pat' Gillian Willmer is an entomologist and ecologist in the UK. She is emeritus professor of zoology at the University of St Andrews and is an expert in pollination.

Why does Pat Willmer matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Pat Willmer?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Pat Willmer.