Posts in "Research"

Poet, writer and performer Genevieve Carver is currently working with SBS marine biologists at the Lighthouse Field Station in an exciting new arts-science collaboration.  She’ll be taking inspiration from marine science to develop creative outputs integrating poetry, spoken word, audio and video.

Genevieve is engaging with two main fieldwork projects:…

In April 2022, I was extremely fortunate to be awarded funds from the Charles Sutherland Scholarship fund which allowed me to attend the 27^th European Meeting for PhD students in Evolutionary Biology (EMPSEB) conference in Espoo, Finland. As I started my PhD studentship during the COVID-19 pandemic in September 2020,…

Reproducibility has always been an important component of good research, and as time has gone on, more and more journals are now requesting full code used for data-handing and analysis to accompany manuscripts. But the big question is: how reproducible is our code, really? How long does a script we’ve…

A non-native shrub invading a dry Andean valley: predicting the spread of Pyracantha angustifolia

Pyracantha angustifolia is an ornamental shrub that produces bright orange berries that, when coupled with its thorns, provides this plant with its suiting common name of “Firethorn”. Most of us have probably come across this shrub…

What is Artificial Intelligence?

AI is a branch of computer science which develops algorithms that enable computers to perform complex tasks and learn from experience, as if they were intelligent beings. Although we are often unaware of it, AI is part of our daily life: it corrects our texts, filters…

While we, Fenella and Tanja, are spending most of our time obtaining and analysing genetic data from our elasmobranch species, there comes a time when we get to share our work with others. Especially inspiring for us as PhD students are scientific conferences, where experts from our field present their…

In everyday life, soils are moved from one place to another for construction and mining. I was given a rather unique challenge: moving a 60-year-old field experiment for a housing development. The experiment was of very few long-term experiments exploring soil pH, which farmers and gardeners often manage for better…

Seabird islands are fascinating places. Their unique ecology means you never know what to expect, as the composition of plants and animals on the island can change dramatically from year to year. Growing up in North Berwick, a town in southeast Scotland, the small island of Craigleith has always loomed…

In the week of 7^th-11^th of June 2021 Aberdeen partners delivered a planned training event called SANH BAAP GWAS Training Workshop. It ran for four hours every day for a week and was attended by 25 trainees and three trainers.

SANH is a £17M GCRF project funded by UKRI with…

The title of our project was “Patterns and drivers of change in the alpine plant communities of Creag Meagaidh NNR”. This meant we were looking at how the plant communities of this mountain range have changed in relation to climate change, deer grazing, and nitrogen deposition. We used information from…