Blog

The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB) is the main organisation promoting the study of animal behaviour and the ethical treatment and conservation of animals in the UK. Each year, ASAB awards one early career researcher with the Christopher Barnard Award, recognising outstanding contributions by a new investigator…

In April 2022 I was exceptionally fortunate to receive funding from the JW Stephen Fellowship Fund from the School of Biological Sciences to support the first field season of my Ph.D. I used the funding along with additional grants to travel to Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean…

The last couple of years have seen some big changes in the ways that teaching has had to be achieved at SBS. From the turmoil of Covid and taking everything online, to the recent move to the all-new Science Teaching Hub (STH). But one thing has remained the same, the…

Four people from the School of Biological Sciences travelled to the Maldives last month. That was PhD student Yehia Hazzazi, and Professors Adam Price, Jo Smith and Pete Smith. It was for the 2^nd meeting of the £17m UKRI funded South Asia Nitrogen Hub (SANH) project that has 40 partner…

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…