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Past research projects
I have undertaken a wide range of projects on the ecology of species and communities. A couple of these are summarised below.
Biodiversity on farms: a complex systems approach
With Jane Memmott, Darren Evans and Jo Brooks
An diagram of the types of interactions between animals and plants
that we studied in the Norwood Farm project.
We benefit from biodiversity on farmland in many different ways - insects pollinate some crops, predatory and parasitoid insects provide pest control, plants influence the local hydrology.
The benefits that we gain from biodiverisity are called ecosystem services. Many ecosystem services are due to interactions between different animals and plants (in a 'food web').
We identified almost one thousand species on Norwood Farm (an organic farm in Somerset, UK) and identified how each species relied upon or interaction with each other (which was a huge task!). We will use this data to test how robust is the food web to loss of species or habitats and how this is predicted to affect the future provision of ecosystem services.
Funded by BBSRC and Defra, 2006-2009
Bats, shrews and their prey as bioindicators
With Nancy Jennings
Small mammals are integral to farmland
food webs; they are fed on by predators and parasites and eat
insects and seeds. Here I am examining a wood mouse for ticks and fleas.
We tested the sensitivity of species of bats, shrews and their prey (nocturanal flying insects and ground surface-dwelling invertebrates)to three aspects of agricultural intensification by comparing their abundance in matched pairs of sites (organic with conventional cereal fields, hay with silage fields, and field boundaries with field centres).
We found some taxa that were good indicators. Good indicators tended to have low mobility and have fast life histories (in contrast to studies of species at risk of extinction, which suggest that species with slow life histories are most sensitive).
The sensitivity of a species to one aspect of intensification was not related to its sensitivity to another aspect of intensification, meaning that species respond differently to different aspects of agricultural intensification.
Funded by Defra and Natural England, 2003-2006
Species-specific sampling of pygmy shrews (Sorex minutus)
This project was to answer a very practical question - how to sample pygmy shrews, which are difficult to sample using methods such as live-trapping. I tested different hair tube designs to maximise the detection rate while being as species-specific as possible.
Funded by People's Trust for Endangered Species, 2008
Photo header: The harvest mouse (Micromus minutus) is an uncommon but relatively widespread small mammal but has probably declined due to the intensification of farming and loss of suitable habitat.