Jane’s research expertise is in the field of ecology, with an emphasis on human impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services. She seeks to understand the processes and consequences of changes in land management and non-native species invasions, using plant-pollinator interactions as a model system. There is global concern over loss of pollination services and her research informs biodiversity conservation and agriculture, both nationally and internationally.

She employs field-based experimental studies combined with laboratory analyses to characterise insect behaviour, plant breeding systems, biodiversity and conservation of pollinators and their impacts on plant population dynamics. Her research programme is inter-disciplinary: her own expertise covers both botanical and zoological fields, but she also collaborates widely with geographers, socio-economists, chemists and molecular biologists, both nationally and internationally.