Organisms and environment
Find out more about our Danau Girang Field Centre in Malaysia
Organisms and Environment research aims to understand how organisms and their environment interact, including the fundamental biology, ecological health and consequences of environmental change on biological diversity to understand interventions that could support conservation in a period of global change.
Research areas
Our Organisms and Environment research focuses on three specific areas:
- Global change and resource resilience – exploring the effect of climate change, and other processes driven by man, on organisms and ecosystems.
- Conservation and evolution – to elucidate how disease, parasitism and habitat loss affect species survival.
- Understanding microbiomes and parasites – addressing the challenges of understanding how microbiomes interact with their hosts to drive both health and disease.
Collaborations
This area of research is multidisciplinary in nature and the division has strong links with research groups across the sciences and social sciences, as well as direct links with University Research Institutes. This includes:
- Water Research Institute
- Sustainable Places Research Institute
- Data Innovation Institute
- Danau Girang Field Centre in Sabah, Malaysia.
This division also has strong external affiliations with the Environment Agency and British Ecological Society, as well as multiple charities and non-government organisations.
Fellowship and PhD applications
We welcome approaches by potential fellowship applicants whose interests map onto the divisional research areas.
We also welcome applications from PhD students with research interests that fit our strategic areas.
Please contact BIOSI-Research@cardiff.ac.uk for more information.
Staff members
| Name | Area of interest |
|---|---|
| Professor Andy Weightman - Head of Division | Genetic adaptation of microbes to environmental challenges, sub-surface molecular microbiology, molecular systematics and metagenomics. |
| Dr Hefin Jones - Deputy Head of Division | Community ecology, climate change, entomology, microbial/soil ecology. |
| Dr Cedric Berger | Host-pathogen interactions, molecular and cellular microbiology. |
| Dr Colin Berry | Enzyme targets for antiparasitic drugs. Insecticidal protein toxins from Bacillus species. |
| Dr Kelly BéruBé | Toxicogenomics of airborne pollutants. |
| Professor Lynne Boddy | Fungal community ecology, forest pathology, use of neural networks in species identification. |
| Professor Michael W. Bruford | Molecular ecology, conservation biology, adaptation. |
| Professor Jo Cable - Divisional Postgraduate Tutor | Host-parasite interactions, molecular and behavioural ecology. |
| Dr Elizabeth Chadwick | Cardiff University Otter Project. |
| Dr Lu Cheng | Longitudinal data analysis, Alternative splicing from single cell RNA-seq, Motif discovery, Clustering large amounts of DNA sequences |
| Dr Tom Connor | Population genomics of bacterial pathogens, bioinformatics and translational microbiology. |
| Dr Isabelle Durance | Ecosystem ecology, landscape ecology, sustainability. |
| Dr Nuno Ferreira | Environmental Toxicology: use of ‘omics’ to understand the impact of emergent contaminants |
| Dr Benoit Goossens | Molecular evolution, molecular ecology and behavioural ecology. |
| Dr Sian Griffiths | Fish biology, behavioural ecology. |
| Dr Frank Hailer | Molecular ecology. Evolutionary genetics. Conservation biology. Phylogeography. Hybridization. Mammals, birds. |
| Dr Rhys Jones | Herpetology. |
| Professor Peter Kille | Heavy metal stress, metallobiology, eco-toxico-genomics. |
| Dr Joanne Lello | Co-infection biology, host pathogen relationships, community ecology. |
| Professor David Lloyd | Eukaryotic microbiology, control of energy metabolism; oscillations, rhythms and clocks. |
| Professor Esh Mahenthiralingam | Bacterial infectious diseases and molecular microbiology. |
| Professor Julian Marchesi | Microbiology of the gut, bioactive agents from marine sponges. |
| Dr Carsten Müller | Chemical ecology, environmental chemistry, waste management. |
| Professor Steve Ormerod | River catchment ecology and avian biology. |
| Dr Pablo Orozco ter Wengel | Genomics, adaptation, conservation. |
| Dr Anna Paziewska-Harris | |
| Dr Sarah Perkins | Ecology of wildlife diseases, network science, real-time dynamics of infections using reporters, invasive species of ecology. |
| Dr Peter Randerson | Landscape ecology. |
| Dr Isa-Rita Russo | Landscape genetics/genomics and conservation genetics |
| Dr Julia Sanchez Vilas | Ecology and evolution of plant sexual systems, sexual dimorphism, cost of reproduction, plant responses to stress, plant ecophysiology, plant population dynamics. |
| Professor Bill Symondson | Community ecology, predator prey relationships, pest management. |
| Dr Rob Thomas | Avian behaviour, ecosystems and climate. |
| Dr Ian Vaughan | Community and freshwater ecology |
