University of Exeter, PhD, Biological Sciences

Research supervision areas include: Behaviour; trade-offs between different aspects of an animal’s life history; sexual selection; physiological ecology; how animals manage and cope with life in an uncertain world, both behaviourally and physiologically; biocatalysis and biochemistry: cloning and over-expression of novel biocatalysts; plant and human enzymes involved in disease and oxidative stress; protein characterisation and enzymatic mechanism; molecular modelling and X-ray structural determination; development of enzyme biosensors; ecology and conservation biology: conservation of threatened species and habitats; processes that cause emergent properties of natural systems; disease; genetically-modified crops; over-harvesting; migratory species; impacts of climate change on marine and terrestrial ecosystems; ecotoxicology and ecophysiology: ecological and physiological impact of environmental change induced by man on aquatic organisms; impact of chemicals on fish (including endocrine disrupting chemicals): population level effects and interactive effects on behaviour, development, reproduction, osmoregulation and acid/base balance effects of nanoparticles in fish; evolutionary genetics: how genes, populations, and species change in response to natural selection; origins, maintenance, and loss of the diversity of life on Earth; collecting genetic information regarding adaptive evolution in diverse organisms at all levels; the molecular genetic basis of adaptive traits; selection, inheritance, phenotypic change and evolutionary constraints; higher-level patterns of diversity and change, including ancient cell evolution the diversity of the eukaryotes; plant and microbial sciences: response of plants to abiotic and biotic stresses, including diseases; plant molecular biology; infectious diseases and complex interactions between microbes and their hosts; microbial interface biology and adaptations exhibited by micro-organisms in contact with different substrates or host surfaces and growing as biofilms molecular basis of natural variation to environmental probes.