Harper Adams University College
Post-Doc, Crop and Environmental Sciences Department
University Of Birmingham, Biosciences
About
I am currently employed as a PostDoctoral Researcher at Harper Adam's University College under the guidance of Dr Jim Monaghan, investigating the effect of deficit irrigation on the growth and marketable harvest yield of onions and lettuce.
For my PhD I worked on the drought affected response of aphids, under the supervision of Dr Jeremy Pritchard and Professor Jeff Bale, at the University of Birmingham. The work was funded by the National Environmental Research Council. The work involved looking at how under climate change scenarios of frequent droughts the plant-aphid interaction changes, from the plant physiology, to the aphid whole integrative organismal approach. This includes looking at aphid responses in fecundity, behaviour, physiology and transcription.
Additional work that I have undertaken, with the guidance of Dr Jeremy Pritchard, is an ecological survey to assess invertebrate diversity and abundance in a man-made underground mining system, in Dudley UK. This work investigated whether this particular man-made system provides an extension of urban habitat, or is a closed habitat system, with different ecosystem composition to the surrounding area and was funded by the British Ecological Society.
During my undergraduate degree, I spent my dissertation comparing the physiological condition of wild Caiman crocodilus yacare during the dry season in the Pantanal swamplands of Brazil, in comparison to well-fed captive animals. This was under the supervision of Dr Hamish Campbell.
