Tag: Scotland
But what is best for the gulls? Food and resources in a changed environment
We all know that diet can have a big impact on our health, and the same is true for the wildlife around us. Some animals adapt to new food resources, often bringing them into our everyday, where we see them scavenging for morsels. Recent Institute graduate Dr Nina O’Hanlon talks about her research into gull diet and how it is affecting their colonies.
Back to the Future @ SCENE
Dr Dominic McCafferty reflects his time living and working in remote field stations and their importance in ecology. He also discusses the running and history of the University’s own field station on the banks of Loch Lomond—the Scottish Centre for Ecology and the Natural Environment (SCENE).
Enjoying the SCENEry
Living at the SCENE field station offers many magical moments given its wild setting. In this post Behind the SCENE’s Angus Lothian tells us us about some of his favourite adventures and shares his most memorable photos.
Deer, ticks and Scottish sunshine
For the most part, contracting diseases from wildlife is not something we need to think about in the UK particularly often. However, Lyme disease, or Lyme borreliosis, is one that any visitors to our stunning countryside must be aware of. This bacterial infection, spread by the bite of blood sucking ticks, can lead to severe and long-lasting symptoms, though if caught […]
Using herring gulls to monitor the health of coastal marine ecosystems
What can herring gulls tell us about the health of our seas? As it turns out, potentially quite a lot. Being top predators, seabirds act as conspicuous signals of what is going on beneath the waves, and PhD student Nina O’Hanlon (@Nina_OHanlon)—a member of the institute’s Seabird Interest Group—thinks that the common herring gull could act as an ideal monitor […]
Scotland: A Tropical Hotspot?
Scotland and the tropics seem to have little in common, aside from copious amounts of rain. However, Scottish institutions are at the heart of a number of tantalising research projects looking at tropical ecology and biology. In this blog post, PhD student Laura Allen (@laurajallen) gives us a glimpse of this work, with a look at a recent conference she organised […]
Silent witnesses: investigating wildlife crime in Scotland
Welcome to the latest Naturally Speaking blog post. This post was written by Research Associate Caroline Millins a qualified veterinary pathologist and researcher in wildlife disease epidemiology. Here Caroline describes work that was featured in her most recent research paper, but also gives the broader story to becoming involved in wildlife pathology. Silent witnesses: investigating wildlife crime in Scotland Seeing wildlife in its natural habitat makes […]
