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School of Biosciences

Organisms and environment

Integrating ecology and evolution to address environmental challenges and safeguard health.

Find out more about our Danau Girang Field Centre in Malaysia

Research in the division of Organisms and Environment aims to understand how organisms and their environment interact with one another. This includes studies of fundamental biology, ecological health, and the consequences of environmental change on biological diversity. Understanding interventions based on these topics 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 illustrate 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 transdisciplinary 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
  • Danau Girang Field Centre in Sabah, Malaysia

A Centre for Doctoral Training, One Health for One Environment: an A-Z Approach for Tackling Zoonoses, based at Cardiff University, opened in September 2023. This is a collaboration between Aberystwyth University, Queen’s University Belfast, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

This division also has strong external affiliations with the Environment Agency, Natural Resource Wales, and the British Ecological Society, as well as multiple charities and non-government organisations.

Fellowship and post-graduate applications

We welcome approaches by potential fellowship applicants whose interests map onto the divisional research areas. Contact biosi-research@cardiff.ac.uk if you are interested.

We also welcome applications from PhD students with research interests that fit our strategic research areas.

Contact biosi-pg@cardiff.ac.uk for more information.

Other post-graduate opportunities include:

Staff members

Below is a list of all the academic staff in this division. If you are interested in collaborating with any of us, use our contact information on our individual pages or email biosi-research@cardiff.ac.uk.

Teaching and research

Name Area of interest
Professor Jo Cable – Head of Division One Health, host-parasite interactions, ecology.
Professor Peter Kille – Deputy Head of Division Heavy metal stress, metallobiology, eco-toxico-genomics.
Dr Cedric Berger Host-pathogen interactions, molecular and cellular microbiology.
Professor Colin Berry – (Emeritus) Enzyme targets for antiparasitic drugs. Insecticidal protein toxins from Bacillus species.
Dr Kelly Berube – (Honorary) Toxicogenomics of airborne pollutants.
Dr Tom Rhys Bishop Biogeographic patterns of species, functional, and phylogenetic diversity in ants, invertebrates and ectotherms.
Professor Lynne Boddy Fungal community ecology, forest pathology, and the use of neural networks in species identification.
Dr Helen Brown Host-Microbe interactions, opportunistic pathogens, biofilm communities.
Dr Elizabeth Chadwick Cardiff University Otter Project.
Dr Sarah Christofides Quantitative ecology, microbial community ecology and food security.
Professor Tom Connor Population genomics of bacterial pathogens, bioinformatics and translational microbiology.
Professor Isabelle Durance Ecosystem ecology, landscape ecology, and sustainability.
Professor Benoît Goossens Molecular evolution, molecular ecology and behavioural ecology.

Dr Siân Griffiths – Teaching & Scholarship

 Fish biology, behavioural ecology.
Dr Frank Hailer Molecular ecology. Evolutionary genetics. Conservation biology. Phylogeography. Hybridization. Mammals, birds.
Dr Hefin Jones Community ecology, climate change, entomology, microbial/soil ecology.

Dr Rhys Jones – Teaching & Scholarship

 Herpetology.

Dr William Kay – Teaching & Scholarship

 Quantitative ecology, movement ecology, education, marine biology.
Dr Joanne Lello Co-infection biology, host-pathogen relationships, and community ecology.
Professor David Lloyd – (Honorary) Eukaryotic microbiology, control of energy metabolism; oscillations, rhythms and clocks.
Professor Esh Mahenthiralingam Bacterial infectious diseases and molecular microbiology.
Professor Julian Marchesi – (Honorary) 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-terWengel Genomics, adaptation, conservation.
Dr Sarah Perkins Ecology of wildlife diseases, network science, real-time dynamics of infections using reporters, and invasive species of ecology.
Dr Peter Randerson Landscape ecology.
Dr Isa-Rita Russo Landscape genetics/genomics and conservation genetics.
Dr Julia Sanchez Vilas – (Honorary) Ecology and evolution of plant sexual systems, sexual dimorphism, cost of reproduction, plant responses to stress, plant ecophysiology, plant population dynamics.
Dr David Stanton Palaeogenetics, ancient DNA, evolutionary genetics, conservation biology.
Dr Rob Thomas – (Honorary) Animal behaviour in changing environments, conservation in practice.
Dr Ian Vaughan Community and freshwater ecology.
Professor Andy Weightman Genetic adaptation of microbes to environmental challenges, sub-surface molecular microbiology, molecular systematics and metagenomics.
Dr Catrin Williams Detection and treatment of pathogens; gut microbiome; bioelectromagnetics.
Dr Fredric Windsor – OnE Postgraduate Tutor Network ecology, freshwater ecosystems, and environmental change.