The term “Protozoa” has no particular phylogenetic significance for they include many independent eukaryotic lineages. But we can define them in a functional and ecological sense as phagotrophic protists, i.e. unicellular eukaryotes that feed on particles (e.g. bacteria, micro-algae, small metazoans). Their constraints on size limit their structural complexity – yet protozoa have evolved over a time span of hundreds of millions of years; during that time span they have adapted to all types of environments and to different prey, predators, and symbionts (Esteban & Fenchel, Ecology of Protozoa, 2nd edition, Springer Nature, https://www.springer.com/gb/book/9783030599782). The photograph shows the anaerobic ciliated protozoon Plagiopyla frontata, commonly found in marine interstitial sediments (photograph subject to copyright).

Many tropical forest animals are threatened by extinction due to deforestation and climate change. Knowledge of how animals respond to predicted changes may help us avoid a sixth mass extinction. This requires understanding of how animals interact with their environments and how environments will change. For example, siamang and gibbons (small apes) depend on tall trees for sleeping and closed canopies for travel (Harrison et al. 2020; Dunbar et al. 2019; The Sleeping Tree). Interrupted canopies also leave animals and plants more exposed to increasing temperatures. Large primates, with their slow reproductive rates, are particularly vulnerable these changes.The photograph shows a Sumatran orang-utan male at a forest edge (photograph subject to copyright).

Bioanalytical chemistry is a scientific discipline concerned with the separation, detection, identification and quantification of biological samples in a variety of settings. My research applies analytical techniques to answer questions relating to healthcare, civil matters and forensic science. With our Skin Cancer Sensing team I’m working towards the development of an analytical technique to provide an early diagnosis of skin cancer. Skin cancer lesions release trace amounts of volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) which we hope to capture and profile. Our team is developing a new approach for the technique, and hoping to understand the key differences in the VOC profiles from healthy and cancerous skin sites. I also work with public sector prisons contributing to national projects investigating psychoactive substance abuse in prison. Through a combination of analytical techniques, including air monitoring, I’m assessing the potential for smoked or vaped psychoactive substances to affect prison staff through secondary exposure. The photographs show the sequential air samplers and portable low flow pumps we’re using to collect ambient air samples from prisons.

Microplastics, small particles < 5 mm in size, are well documented in marine systems but are less understood in freshwaters. My research is investigating microplastics in freshwater fishes, from individual to community impacts to understand their incidence and consequences.​

I have so far been looking at baseline microplastic loadings in water, sediment, invertebrate and fish samples from the Bourne Stream and Dorset Stour and how loads may differ with site, season, trophic level etc. I then aim to simulate current and predicted exposure levels within the laboratory to see how microplastics might impact fish behaviour and complex host-parasite dynamics.​

(Photograph: Suspected microplastic fibre recovered from the gastrointestinal tract of a Dorset Stour chub)​

Follow the project @TheBiologyBen ​

African elephants are found in fragmented and over-populated areas across Africa, which has caused an increase in fenced reserves to manage populations. The long term implications of fenced reserves on elephants is yet to be fully understood, as it is difficult to determine the direct effects elephant are having on their environment as reserves differ greatly. Research into how elephants use their environment is essential for their conservation, where this project explores how elephants damage vegetation, the impacts of insect presence and the long term changes in vegetation. Ultimately, it is essential that research findings are disseminated to people living with elephants, and research here aims to determine public perception of elephant conservation.

Recording and understanding animal movements in aquatic environments can be highly challenging. Prior to the development of biotelemetry for fishes, many species were considered sedentary, with limited capacity or motivation to move long distances. However, new research increasingly shows that individuals within the same species can have highly diverse movement behaviour, including for common bream Abramis brama (pictured). Knowledge of what drives an individual fish towards residency or migration may help us to understand responses to environmental change.​

In creatures great and small there are circulatory systems that carry nutrients, signals, oxygen and wastes to and from their internal organs, tissues and cells. Whether you’re a fly or a human, your blood is being pumped around your body by a heart and filtered by kidneys to keep it clean. It is widely underappreciated that the human cardiovascular system is evolutionarily ancient and based on genetic mechanisms that evolved before the time of insects, hundreds of millions of years ago. ​

By using fruit flies to model aspects of human cardiovascular biology we have helped establish new targets for the control of kidney disease in diabetes, that filtration of the blood is an important means by which an organism controls it’s immune response to ‘friendly’ gut bacteria and that being unable to filter the blood can lead to the accumulation of molecules that promote the development of scar-like tissue and heart disease. ​

Although the work focuses on translating findings from flies to humans, it may well help explain aspects of mortality in wild organisms too. ​

Image shows an insect heart (the horizontal tube) and neighbouring kidney-like cells called nephrocytes (stained pink-orange, with a blue nucleus) which filter the blood. Although anatomically primitive compared to mammalian organs, the genetic mechanisms and basic ‘plumbing’ needs are shared between species.

T cells are key for efficient functioning of the immune system. My interests lie in how we can modify T-cell function to alleviate clinical diseases in which the immune system plays a role. T cells express a range of receptors on their surface; some activate the cell, others dampen function or regulate the T cell in a more nuanced way to change the profile of proteins that they secrete, their migratory characteristics and longevity. My research aims to understand the biology of some of these receptors and to target these receptors to alter T-cell function in cancer and autoimmune disease.​

CoastSnap is a citizen science project that enable monitoring of how beaches change through the analysis of photographs shared by the public (local population and tourists). There are more than 50 CoastSnap stations worldwide, including one in Bournemouth! ​

CoastSnap Mozambique created the first stations in Africa. ​

The ‘stations’ are quite simple, they have a metal frame where mobiles can be placed so photographs are taken always from the exact same point. Anyone can take pictures from that spot and share them via social media or email. The images are then analysed to shoreline changes, such as storm impacts and recovery cycles. Other types of analysis can include the number of people at the beach and beach uses. ​

Unfortunately, 3 stations installed in Mozambique were vandalised and we now the only one still in operation is located in Tofo (province of Inhambane). This is a beautiful coastline famous for its rich marine megafauna visitors, including migrating humpback whales. ​

The aim of the Marineff project is to create habitats for marine life on manmade coastal structures, like seawalls and jetties. Compared to natural rocky shores, seawalls do not support as much biodiversity. The Marineff project is taking inspiration from rockpools and cracks and crevices found on those wonderfully diverse rocky shores and putting those features onto manmade coastal structures. With over 100 artificial rockpools installed this year, we’ve already found crabs, fish and prawns living in them. Over the next two years, we want to see how the rockpools affect the surrounding seawall by providing shaded damp space which will hopefully increase the biodiversity of the structure. We will also determine which arrangement of rockpools yields the most species and provides the greatest biodiversity benefit. This will help us advise coastal engineers who want to incorporate marine habitat into future coastal development. ​

Biodiversity is declining on a global scale despite efforts to the contrary. Many UK birds have declined since the 1960s, and are now classified as endangered or rare. Birds are effective indicators of ecosystem health, occurring in almost every habitat on Earth. Therefore, habitat diversity affects avian diversity attesting that birds are a vital resource to conservationists. Not only are the birds influenced directly by their immediate habitat, they are also indirectly affected by the surrounding landscape, indicating the need for local and landscape-level studies and management. My research assesses this at a landscape-scale using remote sensing techniques in combination with field data. ​

I study the ecology of the past (mostly the ice ages although not exclusively) and the evolutionary scale responses of organisms to changes in climate and environment. I have broad research interests encompassing the use of faunas in reconstructing ice age environments (and increasingly from earlier times), species and population extinction and evolution, understanding geographical changes in organism distribution in response to climate change, and using ancient DNA to test ideas about the resultant effects to different populations of animals. This has included a focus on Neanderthal ecology and how they lived with a recent study on their likely prowess as sprinters. Collaborative research at Bournemouth University has been work with a psychologist and video games technologists to examine hunting in the past by simulating prey spotting in different environments. I am also interested in the use of fossil data in conservation biology. ​

Photo shows John Stewart conserving a Miocene (ca. 6 million year old) elephant femur in the Abu Dhabi desert prior to lifting.​

People live on land and a significant part of their activities focuses especially on terrestrial ecosystems, making the land sub-system central to the study of interaction between people and the environment. We use land to produce food, build settlements, acquire resources, but also for e.g. leisure and recreation. All these activities alter the Earth’s surface, contributing to e.g. climate change, changes in hydrological systems or in biodiversity. ​

In the Mediterranean, one of the most fire-prone environments in the world, processes such as urbanisation, agricultural abandonment and demographic ageing caused massive land use and land cover changes. These changes have created more hazardous landscape configuration, increasing the occurrence of wildfires. It is estimated that around 45 000 wildfires occur in Mediterranean Europe every year, causing large ecological and socio-economic damage. In order to try and decrease the risk of wildfires occurrence and to minimise the damage they are causing, it is important to understand how and why these land use and land cover changes are occurring in the first place, and what is the role society and societal changes play in it. ​

Discover Science Christchurch is a local initiative to engage future generations in science technology and engineering. With the support of local industry, universities and the wider public this will be a dynamic space located at a key position in the centre of Christchurch. Our mission is to inspire the next generation to address global challenges affecting our oceans using creative and interactive approaches. We invite you to get involved! Like us on facebook, join up as a supporter on our website and become part of our vision! ​

Our genetic inheritance in combination with our lifestyle choices and living environment is influencing many aspects of our life, including our fertility. As precision healthcare is moving into clinical settings research into how the genetic uniqueness in all of us is influencing our ability to have children. The pictures are from the presentation in the EMBL Workshop in Germany on precision health where the BU research on human genomics and infertility was presented. ​

The structure and composition of forests are key aspects of habitat and the ecosystem services that forests provide. Forest loss and fragmentation is a conservation concern globally, with local-level consequences for humans and wildlife. Understanding the links between forest structure, composition, biological and geographical processes, and function is critical to assessing the consequences of forest loss, both by human activities and by more natural causes, such as drought, disease, fire, etc. My research uses remote sensing techniques to model forest structure, species composition, and turnover (i.e. regeneration, disturbance), in order to assess condition, identify the factors determining habitat quality, and evaluate how they change over time. ​

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Coasts provide critical feeding habitat for vast populations of birds, but are also used extensively by people, for example for recreation, housing, industry and shellfishing. Many of these bird species have legal protection, and so it is important that any human activities that do occur do not adversely affect the birds. Understanding such effects can be achieved from knowledge of the food requirements of the birds and how each individual bird attempts to meet its requirements by searching for food. This understanding can then be used to inform coastal managers on which human activities can occur while having minimal negative impacts on the birds. ​

Anglers spend a lot of time at the bank side enjoying nature and catching fish. Environmental managers and regulators aim to maintain freshwater habitats and often to maximise fishing potential too. To understand the population dynamics of wild fish populations involves regular sampling which is resource intensive. We have been working with anglers to compile their catch records to see if we can infer population dynamics and compare these to data collected by environmental monitoring1. We have also worked with anglers to collect specific samples of scales to understand the growth2 and diet3 of barbel (Barbus barbus) and to catch adult fish for us to tag and track their movements4. By engaging anglers in the collection of data, this creates an avenue to also disseminate the findings and hopefully can lead to informed management decisions with stakeholder buy in. ​

Kijani biogas toilets were installed in Brainhouse school in Kenya in 2018. We developed 23 biogas toilets to provide the school with high-quality toilet facilities which treat toilet waste and supply the kitchen with a renewable gas for cooking. Biogas is a well-established and trusted technology: micro-organisms break down the waste, killing harmful pathogens and converting it into biogas and a liquid fertiliser. The biogas is safely stored under low pressure in purpose-made biogas bags located within the unit itself. This year, we are launching our new, modular, freestanding and scalable system which is, affordable, low maintenance, quick to install and easily scaled up to meet any situation.

Photo: The team behind the biogas toilet installation at Brainhouse school, Kenya

Follow the project here: https://www.acef.uk.com/about

My Research involved the observation of the decomposition process of my skeletal remains. These remains specifically have had sharp-force trauma inflicted upon their surface which are similar to those found in forensic cases of dismemberment. I aimed to determine the longevity of these cutmarks as well as how the surrounding microenvironment may have hindered or altered the identification of them throughout the experiment. I found through my short-term taphonomy experiments that there are notable changes to the surrounding environment as a result of the remains presence; specifically there is evidence of ion exchange between the surrounding soil and the skeletal remains, an increase in vegetation and arthropod activity. Specifically, I found that over an eight-month deposition period, the cutmarks exhibited physical and measurable changes that were not expected and certainly could be impactful in a medico-legal context. Using digital microscopy and 3D confocal microscopy, I was able to observe the smaller changes to the bone surface and the cutmark morphology, of which I could identify how much they changed based on their interaction with the surrounding destructive microenvironment.

This project aims to empower women groups in East Africa through the development of mutually beneficial partnerships or ‘Sister Communities’. We bring together the Tofo Life women from Tofo (Mozambique) and the Bidii na Kazi women from Mida Creek (Kenya). The project will facilitate that they exchange experiences and build capacity to undertake and manage diverse sources of income rooted on the conservation of the natural and cultural heritage. By learning from their motivations, trajectory and challenges, and the way they can work together, Sister Communities will co-create a model that can be applied and replicated by other communities in East Africa and elsewhere in the global south.

https://www.facebook.com/SisterCommunities