Prof David Atkinson
Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour
Research Interests: Adaptive responses of organisms, and impacts on ecosystems, arising from widespread environmental change (e.g. climate, eutrophication).
Current ACCE students: Garrath Leighton, Ben Walsh, Lauren Aylward, Helen Davison, Kelly Ross
Google scholar https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=6V3Rx5MAAAAJ&hl=en
Dr Karl Bates
Department of Musculoskeletal Biology
Research Interests: My research concentrates on the functional anatomy of terrestrial vertebrates, with particular focus on the locomotor system. My goal is to understand the links between morphology (both hard and soft tissues) and biomechanics in order to better characterise how animals achieve their full range of behavioural activities and interact with their environments. I am particularly interested in the functional consequences of changing morphology through deep time and evaluating how elements of the locomotor and masticatory systems have evolved to allow animals to radiate into a variety of ecological niches. This has led me to study a range of living tetrapods from primates (particularly humans and other Great Apes) to archosaurs (birds and crocodilians) in order to further our understanding of major evolutionary transitions in biomechanics. I routinely use a range of theoretical and experimental techniques to study locomotion, ranging from motion analysis, force and pressure platforms to 3D static and dynamic computer simulations.
Current ACCE students: Matthew Dempsey, Samuel Cross, Sophia Anderson
Dr Jakob Bro-Jorgensen
Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour
Research Interests: I am a behavioural ecologist with a broad interest in evolution, ecology and conservation. I am keen to uncover fundamental principles governing behavioural responses in animals and how these feed back at the population and ecosystem level. My current research centres on how changes in climate and land-use impact on interactions between species and community structure, with a focus on mammals in African savannah and dryland systems.
Current ACCE students: Kim van de Wiel, Alex Cranston
Dr Stephen Cornell
Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour
Research Interests: I am a theoretical ecologist, and I use mathematical models to understand how organisms interact with each other and with their environment. Broadly, I am interested in how many types of biological heterogeneity (between species, between individuals, and over space and time) affect how species coexist, invade, and evolve.
Current ACCE students: David Scott, Tom Travers, Fionnuala McCully
Prof Andy Fenton
Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour
Research Interest: I have a broad background in theoretical evolution and ecology, with a particular interest in host-parasite dynamics. Most of my work focuses on the community context of infectious diseases in wildlife, aiming to understand how multiple parasite and multiple host species interact to influence the emergence, spread and impact of infectious diseases in natural systems. I approach these issues through combinations of generic and tailored mathematical models, often coupled with data from a range of wildlife systems. In addition to my work on host-parasite ecology, I also have developed theory looking at the evolution of hosts and pathogens, and some aspects of predator-prey dynamics.
Current ACCE students: Primary supervisor for Bryony Allen, Jacob Cohen. Secondary supervisor for Fiona Bell, Hazel Farthing, Kim van de Wiel
Dr Jonathan Green
jonathan.green@liverpool.ac.uk
School of Environmental Sciences
Research Interests: My research interests lie at the interface of the traditional disciplines of ecology, physiology and behaviour. My work focuses on seabirds, as these animals must be adapted to two contrasting environments: the challenges of foraging in a big, deep, cold, dark, distant water body are very different to those that they face while breeding and moulting on land. Furthermore, both of these environments and their associated challenges change naturally on a seasonal and annual basis and are under anthropogenic threats from over-fishing, climate change and renewable energy developments.
Current research projects range from the tropics to the poles with current and recent PhD students working with a range of partners in industry in the UK and overseas through organisations such as JNCC, CEH, Marine Scotland and the British Trust for Ornithology.
I have a particular interest and expertise in the theory and practice of PhD supervision, for example through understanding the role of the ‘hidden curriculum’ in doctoral education.
Current ACCE students: Jamie Duckworth, Eve Merrall
Twitter: @jon_seabirds
Research group webpage: www.segul.org.uk
Dr Andrew Hacket-Pain
andrew.hacket-pain@liverpool.ac.uk
School of Environmental Sciences
Research Interests: I am an ecologist focused on understanding and predicting the impact of global environmental change on forests. I work on tree reproduction and forest regeneration, particularly the ecology of seed masting. I am interested in understanding how plants regulate variability in reproductive effort, and how they synchronise this variability over space and time. My current work is focused on understanding how masting will respond to environmental change and predicting what this will mean for the dynamics of forest ecosystems. I also work on forest and tree growth, using tree rings to monitor forest responses to climate change, and to predict the resilience of forests to drought and other stresses.
Current ACCE students: Jessie Foest
Dr James Hall
Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour
Research Interests: Microbes are ubiquitous, diverse, versatile, and can evolve quickly in response to changes in their environments. For many challenges we face — from antimicrobial resistance, to plant health and productivity, to greenhouse gas emissions — microbes are both part of the problem and part of the solution. I research how and why microbes evolve, using experimental evolution, molecular biology, modelling, and genomics, with a focus on the contribution of mobile genetic elements, such as plasmids, to bacterial evolution.
Current ACCE students: Matthew Kelbrick, Grace Wardell, Victoria Orr
Twitter: @jpjhall
Institutional webpage: www.liverpool.ac.uk/integrative-biology/staff/james-hall/
Personal website: www.jpjhall.net
Public engagement website: www.andthemicrobes.org
Dr Jenny Hodgson
Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour
Research Interests: I study how the spatial arrangement of land use and management affects the viability of species. The amount and pattern of our nature reserves and green spaces will strongly affect whether species can survive under climate change. I use a mixture of empirical and modelling approaches to investigate how species are already responding, and what might happen in the future.
Current ACCE students: Primary supervisor for Fiona Bell, Thomas Travers, Georgina Halford. Secondary supervisor for Katie Threadgill, Eve Taylor-Cox, Bryony Allen, David Scott
Prof Greg Hurst
Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour
Research Interests: Most animals are symbiotic – a fusion of microbes and their host. I’m interested in how microbes influence animal biology – and by extension their ecology and evolution. We work both on laboratory model systems and field analyses, and combine molecular, organismal, genomic and mathematical approaches.
Current ACCE students: Helen Davison, Jordan Jones
Twitter: @theladybirdman
Research group website: https://www.sites.google.com/site/hurstlab/home
Prof Jane Hurst
Current ACCE students: Holly Coombes, Clare Jones, Susanna Phillips
Dr Nova Mieszkowska
Department of Earth, Ocean and Ecological Sciences
Research Interests: Responses of marine biodiversity to climate change, ocean acidification, microplastics and multiple stressors, biogeography, macroecology, and underlying physiological mechanisms. Species Distribution Modelling, Dynamic Energy Budget modelling, mechanistic functional traits modelling. Experimental ecophysiology. Reproductive physiology and phenology. Invasion biology and impacts of invasives on native biodiversity. Physiological stress responses to environmental parameters and synthetic compounds. Maintaining long-term time-series of intertidal species and communities around Britain and Europe. Impacts of anthropogenic pressures on the coastal zone. Field and mesocosm experimental investigations of physiological impacts of climate drivers on marine ectotherms and macroalgae. Science-policy knowledge transfer; assessments of ecosystem status, planning of MCZs, compliance to national and international policy drivers. Adaptational mechanisms underpinning changes in marine environments.
Current ACCE students: Dina-Leigh Simons
Twitter: @MarClim_UK
Dr David Montagnes
Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour
Research Interests: Population ecology and protistology, with an emphasis on aquatic ecology.
Current ACCE student: Hazel Farthing
Dr Encarni Montoya Romo
School of Environmental Sciences
Research Interests: I work in the palaeoecology of Neotropical ecosystems mainly focused on Late Glacial to present-day environmental change (last 50 thousand years). My research is related to the vegetation dynamics in the long-term and its response to environmental drives such as climate, natural hazards (volcanic activity) or human occupation. For this purpose, I analyse a wide range of biological proxies preserved in sedimentary archives such as lakes or peat bogs, mainly pollen, charcoal particles and non-pollen palynomorphs. Specifically, main topics of my research are:
a) Past vegetation responses to environmental change
b) Non-anthropogenic versus anthropogenic causes of palaeoecological change
c) Quaternary in the Neotropics
d) Tropical ecology and palaeoecology
e) Global change from a palaeoclimatic perspective
f) Socio-ecological systems response to natural hazards and climate change
The use of long-term perspectives from the past is essential to develop new understandings of current and future ecological processes. Moreover, I am particularly concerned about the socioeconomic impacts of climatic change, which in the Neotropics could reach catastrophic levels. I love the utility of palaeoecology not only as a tool for past landscape reconstructions, but also for management and conservation purposes that could be implemented in the use of taxa with economic value, or in facing natural hazards.
Current ACCE student: Molly Spater
Twitter: @palaeoecology
Research blog: https://mauritiastories.wordpress.com
Research gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Encarni-Montoya
Prof Kate Parr
Current ACCE students: Alice Walker, Joel Woon, Jack Walker
Prof Steve Paterson
Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences
Research Interests: My research focusses on Infection and population genomics. I am a director of The University of Liverpool’s Centre for Genomic Research and of the NERC Environmental Omics Facility. These provide state-of-the-art advice, training and capabilities in omics to NERC researchers, including PhD students. Research systems include immunity and infection in natural populations, the evolution of drug resistance in clinical and veterinary infections, and genomic surveillance of coronavirus in environmental and clinical samples.
Current ACCE student: Flora Whiting-Fawcett
Twitter: @scottishwormboy
Dr Samantha Patrick
Department of Earth, Ocean and Ecological Sciences
Research Interests: Life-history trade-offs, Parental Care, Movement and Foraging Ecology, Personality, Behavioural plasticity and variability, Seabird Ecology, Avian Ecology. Polar Biology
Current ACCE students: Fionnuala McCully, Frederick McKendrick
Twitter: @SamCPatrick
Dr Stewart Plaistow
Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour
Research Interests: The overarching goal of my group’s research is to understand how genes, environments and other non-genetic aspects of heredity shape the ecological and evolutionary responses of populations to environmental change. At a very simple level, this involves understanding how individuals differ from each other and how these differences are transmitted across generations. We use Daphnia (water fleas) as a model system to answer these questions at all levels from epigenetic effects through to ecosystem-level consequences.
Current ACCE Student: Camille Riley
Twitter: @StewPlaistow
Lab website: http://pcwww.liv.ac.uk/~stewp123/index.html
Dr Thomas Price
Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences
Research Interests: I am an evolutionary biologist, working on sex and selfish genes. One of my main areas of research at the moment is how temperature impacts on fertility, and the consequences for climate change (see https://thermal-fertility-network-eseb.com/). My second area of research is gene drive, specifically meiotic drive- selfish X chromosomes that kill Y chromosome sperm to allow themselves to spread through populations. I am trying to understand the mechanisms, ecology and evolutionary consequences of these gene drives.
Current ACCE Students: Ben Walsh, Sophie Lyth
Dr Alana Sharp
Institute of Life Course and Medical Sciences
Research Interests: My research interests include comparative anatomy and function of vertebrates to understand the relationships between form, function and evolution of the musculoskeletal system. Specifically, I focus on cranial biomechanics of feeding and the function of sutures and other cranial soft tissues.
Current ACCE student: Amber Wood-Bailey
Twitter: @AlanaCSharp
Prof Paula Stockley
Current ACCE Students: Rhiannon Bolton, Callum Duffield, Emma Cartledge, Alice Clark, Samuel Morris, Melanie Baker
Dr Jack Thomson
Department of Earth, Ocean and Ecological Sciences
Research Interests: I’m interested in intraspecific variation in behaviour and stress physiology, and particularly in what this can tell us about how marine organisms cope with natural and anthropogenic challenge.
Current ACCE Student: Daniel Kit Maskrey
Prof Mark Viney
Research Interests: Parasites; Parasitic nematodes; Immune function in wild animals; Microbiomes
Current ACCE Student: Simon Hunter-Barnett
accedtp.ac.uk 