Trinity College Dublin, Ecology and Evolution
Sometimes a species is so well studied it is hard to believe that there is anything new to discover about them. I’ve often felt this about badgers, the subject of my PhD research. Don’t get me wrong, I love badgers and they could never bore me. Ever. But there are just so many papers already …
Continue reading “Super-Ranging: Ranging behaviour in badgers isn’t always black and white!”
Badgers are a very common mammal in Ireland, but few of us have actually seen one of these iconic creatures in the wild. That’s because they are nocturnal, mostly coming out of their setts only at night to forage, patrol their territories and meet the opposite sex.
While there is irrefutable evidence for the transfer of bovine TB between badgers and cattle, the mechanisms of transfer are not clearly documented. In order to reduce such transfer, it is obviously important to understand how infection takes place. With such questions in mind, data from a study of free-ranging badgers was combined with detailed …
Drumroll please! It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for! The votes have been cast, they’ve been counted and recounted, and we can finally showcase the entries and reveal the winner of the 4th EcoEvo blog photo competition!
Last week, the Zoology department hosted the first Irish One Health workshop, welcoming speakers and attendees from a range of disciplines. This gathering provided an opportunity to discuss the One Health initiative, which aims to solve world health problems through transdisciplinary collaboration, through a series of short presentations discussing various aspects of global health, and …
Continue reading “Exploring the One Health Initiative in the Irish context”
One of the best parts of my PhD in the Zoology Department at TCD has been working with undergraduate students. The strength, creativity, and dedication of the students shines brightest in their fourth-year theses. Like many programmes, TCD requires final year students to plan, conduct, analyse and report a novel piece of science- whether it’s …
Earlier this month, postgraduate students of the Zoology department compete in the fourth annual ‘School of Natural Sciences Lightning Talks’ alongside students and staff from Botany and Geology. We all presented 120-second snapshots of our research and were judged by a panel. Judges included the Head of the School of Natural Sciences Professor Fraser Mitchell, …
Continue reading “Winning research – Zoology storms the Lightning Talks”
Aoibheann Gaughran (@Aoibh_G) Supervisor: Nicola Marples Title: How population density influences social mammal ecology: A case study of the European badger. The local density of a population of social mammals can affect many aspects of its ecology including social structure, mating systems, dispersal behavior, territorial behavior and the dynamics of disease. Scientists and policy-makers need …
Continue reading “School of Natural Sciences Postgraduate Symposium 2016: Part 3/3”
One of the best things about my PhD has got to be the fieldwork. My project involves analysing the GPS data of a population of badgers to find out where they forage, how big their territories are, who lives with whom and how they disperse. This means putting GPS collars on them twice a year. …
Consider this scenario. You’ve recently published a new academic paper. It’s effectively your baby. The months or years of experiments, analysis, frustration, toil and troubles are now distilled into a stellar research article which, in your opinion at least, changes the face of science as we know it. Great! Now you need to get the word out beyond …