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.
Professor Tom Connor	Population genomics of bacterial pathogens, bioinformatics and translational microbiology.
Professor Isabelle Durance	Ecosystem ecology, landscape ecology, sustainability.
Dr Benoît Goossens	Molecular evolution, molecular ecology and behavioural ecology.
Dr Siân 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 (Honorary)	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-terWengel	Genomics, adaptation, conservation.
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