Three NERC ENVISION PhD students Join MEEB

Alberto H. Orta

Alberto will join us from Mexico, where he recently obtained his Masters in the Rebollar Lab at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Alberto’s previous research includes the impacts of global warming on frog skin microbiota and susceptibility to the fungal skin pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd).

With Aaron Comeault and Amy Ellison at Bangor, and in collaboration with the Smithsonian (USA) and Universidad de las Américas (Ecuador), Alberto will be employing metagenomics methods to investigate the impacts of Anthropogenic habitat modification on the co-evolutionary potential of amphibian skin microbiota with Bd.

Lauren Evans

Lauren is a graduate in Ecology from the University of Edinburgh, where she studied environmental drivers of body size in European Storm Petrels. Lauren is a keen birder with extensive experience in monitoring bird populations in remote locations including the Faroe and Shetland islands.

Lauren will be studying the drivers of Manx shearwater chick growth using a combination of biologging, diet metabarcoding analyses, and physical oceanography. This multidisciplinary project will be mentored by Amy Ellison, Line Cordes (Norwegian Institute for Nature Research) and Peter Robbins (School of Ocean Sciences).

Charlie Gregory

Charlie is a graduate of the School of Ocean Sciences and has worked in various aquatic research support roles across Bangor University. Charlie’s ENVISION studentship will mark a return to MEEB, after gaining his MScRes here on the chronobiology of trout nutrition and gut microbiota in 2021.

Charlie’s studentship, co-funded by the Fishmongers Company and in collaboration with the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research and University of Tromso, will be mentored by Alex Papadopulos and Amy Ellison. Charlie will be investigating the genomic consequences of extreme, rapid population declines in salmonids in Norwegian lakes.