About me

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Liverpool, United Kingdom
I am interested in how we can use DNA sequences to understand biodiversity – how do we recognise species, and how are species related at taxonomic, ecological and geographic levels? My passion for biodiversity research has led me from the world’s largest natural history collection - Natural History Museum, London, where I completed my MSc, to the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario - global centre for the international Barcode of Life, as a PhD student, and to the hyper-diverse tropics of Southeast Asia. The tropics will be the first regions to experience historically unprecedented climates and this will happen within the next decade. Consequently my recent research has focussed on understanding the effects of urbanisation and climate change on tropical and subtropical biodiversity - encompassing both species richness and ecological integrity across a diversity of taxonomic groups.

Feb 13, 2010

Barcoding blowflies for forensic entomology



This summer I collected blowflies in my backyard for a research group at UCLAN, the university in Preston, a city close to where my parents live. They are barcoding the flies with the aim of creating a library which can be used to determine time of death.. creepy stuff, but looking forward to seeing the results. They sent instructions on how to make a fly trap out of a lemonade bottle.