Author: Lucy Moore Fuller

Beth Clark

17 March 2021
Lucy Moore Fuller
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Categories: 5A

Beth is a PhD student at Bangor University, studying deep water communities on the west coast of Hawai`i.

She is interested in differences between biomass, abundance and community composition of micronekton (fish, shrimp and squid ranging between 2-20cm) nearshore and offshore, in the mesopelagic zone, between 200-1000m deep.

Beth collaborated on an animation of her research with animator Mair Perkins, which has featured in several science film festivals worldwide.

Beth is currently working in collaboration with NOAA, looking at near-island enhancement in mesopelagic micronekton communities

Through her research she hopes to show how seemingly spatially distant habitats link together as an interconnected marine ecosystem, and the importance of this in our changing world.

Beth’s research is funded as part of the Envision Doctoral Training Programme.

Andrea Sartorius

17 March 2021
Lucy Moore Fuller
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Categories: 4A

I am an ecologist, and my primary research interest is how animals survive and adapt within human-modified environments. I am currently working on my PhD project on the One Health effects of trace metal contamination from derelict lead mines in Wales. I have been collecting environmental and animal samples from abandoned mines and surrounding areas and assessing their trace metal concentrations and various health factors to determine the extent and impacts of trace metal contamination. I am a part of the Envision DTP, and based at the School of Veterinary Medicine and Science at the University of Nottingham.

Prior to my PhD, I earned an MRes in Biodiversity, Evolution, and Conservation at UCL, where I did one research project mapping museum specimen collection locations, and another camera trapping mammals in North London parks. For my undergraduate degree, I studied biology at Pomona College, a liberal arts university in California, USA, and did a year–long dissertation project studying the impact of fire and invasive flora on native vertebrate assemblages.

Links

Contact email: andrea.sartorius@nottingham.ac.uk

Twitter handle: @aisartorius

Alexander Elsy

17 March 2021
Lucy Moore Fuller
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Categories: 2A

I am a tropical forest ecologist working towards a PhD at the University of Stirling, funded by the IAPETUS DTP. I am interested in forest recovery in late succession and accurately capturing the value of secondary forests in the tropics. My current fieldwork is based on a secondary forest chronosequence in the Barro Colorado Nature Monument, Panama and I have also worked in degraded secondary forest and oil palm plantations in Sabah, Borneo. I have a keen interest in climate and land use change, community ecology and trees and liana interactions.

Links

Twitter: https://twitter.com/_AlexElsy

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-elsy/

University page: https://www.stir.ac.uk/people/1017503#aboutme

Alex Shakspeare

17 March 2021
Lucy Moore Fuller
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Categories: 5C

Alex is a PGR at the University of Essex, focusing on sustainable aquaculture. Having spent time employed in the environmental survey sector and in a range of marine and freshwater aquaculture settings he is now working in close collaboration with local oyster farmers and existing grants, such as the NOSy project. Using novel technologies he aims to increase our understanding of bivalve behaviours and develop tools to apply this in industry. Bivalve production is already one of the most sustainable forms of food production and Alex hopes to assist the industry and expand its ability to supply food to the growing population.

In addition to his core work, Alex is successfully collaborating with other groups, including AFBI, the Northern Irish Agri Food and Biosciences Institute, and colleagues at Burapha University in Thailand. Using the tools developed under the NOSy project and through his PhD research these collaborations aim to inform food safety and farm efficiency measures.

Links

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlexShaks

ResearchGate: www.researchgate.net/profile/Alex-Shakspeare

Alex Nicol-Harper

17 March 2021
Lucy Moore Fuller
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Categories: 1B

Alex is a 3rd year PhD student at the University of Southampton (on the SPITFIRE DTP), in collaboration with the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (USA). She uses population modelling (specifically Matrix Population Models and Bayesian methods) to explore life history patterns and inform conservation, with the common eider and black-browed albatross as study species.

Her background is in biology (Natural Sciences undergrad) and conservation (MSc Biodiversity, Conservation and Management). Prior to her PhD she was a Research Technician on her primary supervisor Tom Ezard’s Wellcome Trust-funded project on transient dynamics in human populations – described in this blog post (2020/11/07).

Alex is keen to share her research with policymakers and practitioners – including contributing to the recent ‘International Single Species Action Plan for the Conservation of the Common Eider Somateria m. mollissima and S. m. borealis’ – in addition to engaging the public (see this Twitter presentation). She is also currently a volunteer researcher for Conservation Evidence, and a student rep on the National Oceanography Centre’s Athena SWAN Self-Assessment Team and PhD Working Group.

Links

Email: a.nicol-harper@soton.ac.uk

Twitter: @alexnicolharper #TheNotSoCommonEider

A slide from Alex’s virtual speed talk entitled “Breeding Propensity versus Fertility in the Common Eider: A Need for Coordination Across the Boundaries Between Population Ecology and Conservation”, which won ‘Best Presentation with a  Conservation Application’ at the 2020 meeting of the North America Congress for Conservation Biology.

Sophus zu Ermgassen

17 March 2021
Lucy Moore Fuller
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Categories: 5B

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) lay out society’s ambition to deliver social and economic prosperity for all, while conserving nature on land and sea (SDGs 14 and 15 respectively). However, ‘business-as-usual’ approaches to solving social and economic development challenges may compromise our ability to achieve the SDGs that are focused on eliminating our impacts on species, ecosystems, and the climate (Spaiser et al. 2017; Hickel 2019). How can we enable nature to thrive through the Great Acceleration? 

Sophus zu Ermgassen’s research takes an interdisciplinary approach to exploring global solutions. His core PhD is focused on how to resolve the potential conflict between SDGs 9 (the expansion of the world’s infrastructure networks, with a minimum of $60 trillion projected to be spent on new infrastructure by 2040), and SDGs 14 and 15. In this context, he focuses on understanding the role and outcomes of No Net loss/Net gain policies and biodiversity offsets, a globally-significant mechanism for attempting to resolve perceived trade-offs between infrastructure and biodiversity (Bull and Strange 2018). His methods include evidence-synthesis, spatial mapping, causal inference and surveys.

His publications can be found on his Google Scholar profile, and he tweets at @sophusticated.