Stuart Bearhop

Last updated

Stu Bearhop
Born
Stuart Bearhop
Alma mater University of Glasgow (BSc, PhD)
Awards Witherby Memorial Lecture (2017)
Scientific career
Fields Foraging ecology
Migration
Stable isotopes
Institutions University of Exeter
Queen's University Belfast
Durham University
Thesis Stable isotopes in feathers and blood as a tool to investigate diet and mercury dynamics of seabirds  (1999)
Website biosciences.exeter.ac.uk/staff/index.php?web_id=stuart_bearhop

Stuart Bearhop SFHEA is a Professor of animal ecology at the University of Exeter. His research makes use of stable isotope analysis. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

Education

Bearhop obtained a Bachelor of Science degree and a PhD from the University of Glasgow in 1995 [4] and 1999 [5] respectively.

Career and research

In 2012 Bearhop was appointed a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). From 1999 to 2000 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Glasgow and then from that year to 2001 worked as Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) postdoctoral research associate at the Durham University. He continued working for NERC until 2003 when he became Independent Research Fellow at both Queen's University Belfast (QUB) & University of Glasgow and from 2004 to 2006 was a lecturer on conservation biology at QUB. Because of the success of lectures at QUB, he was promoted to a senior lecturer in the same topic and joined University of Exeter faculty in 2007. In 2010 he became an Associate Professor of animal ecology and next year was promoted to Professor in the same field. [4]

In 2005 Stuart Bearhop and Peter Berthold studied Eurasian blackcap and other song birds in Austria and Germany and discovered that all bird species hibernate at the same time. [6]

In 2008 Stuart and Gillian Robb had studied birds and it attractiveness to various bird feeders in Northern Ireland and Cornwall [7] and in 2010 Stuart teamed up with Timothy Harrison, Jim Reynolds, Dan Chamberlain and Graham Martin to study blue tits' artificial feeding. [8]

In 2013 Dr. Stuart Bearhop had worked with the University of Leeds' Drs. Keith Hamer and Ewan Wakefield and Thomas Bodey of University of Exeter to study northern gannet at the Bempton Cliffs in the East Riding of Yorkshire. [9]

From 2013 to 2014 he returned to Northern Ireland and Cornwall where he studied blue tits and discovered that their offspring survival depends on how well the parents get fed in winter. [10]

He remained in those places for another two years due to extensive study which continued from 2015 to 8 to 10 January 2016. [11] The last two years showed that every time a human feeds the birds the tits get a chick more while in Cornwall the same species used to get more fatter and therefore produced fewer chicks. [12]

In 2016 he had praised Chinese officials for imposing the ivory ban to protect elephant species in Asia and Africa. [13] In 2017 Bearhop got a grant from European Research Council to study Brant, a species of goose and climate change and its affects on the species. [14]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bird feeding</span> The activity of feeding wild birds

Bird feeding is the activity of feeding wild birds, often by means of bird feeders. With a recorded history dating to the 6th century, the feeding of wild birds has been encouraged and celebrated in the United States and United Kingdom, with it being the United States' second most popular hobby having National Bird-Feeding Month congressionally decreed in 1994. Various types of food are provided by various methods; certain combinations of food and method of feeding are known to attract certain bird species.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isotope analysis</span> Analytical technique used to study isotopes

Isotope analysis is the identification of isotopic signature, abundance of certain stable isotopes of chemical elements within organic and inorganic compounds. Isotopic analysis can be used to understand the flow of energy through a food web, to reconstruct past environmental and climatic conditions, to investigate human and animal diets, for food authentification, and a variety of other physical, geological, palaeontological and chemical processes. Stable isotope ratios are measured using mass spectrometry, which separates the different isotopes of an element on the basis of their mass-to-charge ratio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coal tit</span> Species of bird

The coal tit, is a small passerine bird in the tit family, Paridae. It is a widespread and common resident breeder in forests throughout the temperate to subtropical Palearctic, including North Africa. The black-crested tit is now usually included in this species.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Willow tit</span> Species of passerine bird in the tit family Paridae

The willow tit is a passerine bird in the tit family, Paridae. It is a widespread and common resident breeder throughout temperate and subarctic Europe and across the Palearctic. The plumage is grey-brown and off-white with a black cap and bib. It is more of a conifer specialist than the closely related marsh tit, which explains it breeding much further north. It is resident, and most birds do not migrate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eurasian blue tit</span> Species of bird

The Eurasian blue tit is a small passerine bird in the tit family, Paridae. It is easily recognisable by its blue and yellow plumage and small size.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great tit</span> Passerine bird in the tit family Paridae

The great tit is a small passerine bird in the tit family Paridae. It is a widespread and common species throughout Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and east across the Palearctic to the Amur River, south to parts of North Africa where it is generally resident in any sort of woodland; most great tits do not migrate except in extremely harsh winters. Until 2005 this species was lumped with numerous other subspecies. DNA studies have shown these other subspecies to be distinct from the great tit and these have now been separated as two distinct species, the cinereous tit of southern Asia, and the Japanese tit of East Asia. The great tit remains the most widespread species in the genus Parus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australasian treecreeper</span> Family of birds

There are seven species of Australasian treecreeper in the passerine bird family Climacteridae. They are medium-small, mostly brown birds with patterning on their underparts, and all are endemic to Australia-New Guinea. They resemble, but are not closely related to, the Holarctic treecreepers. The family is one of several families identified by DNA–DNA hybridisation studies to be part of the Australo-Papuan songbird radiation. There is some molecular support for suggesting that their closest relatives are the large lyrebirds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black-capped chickadee</span> Species of small, non-migratory, North American passerine

The black-capped chickadee is a small, nonmigratory, North American passerine bird that lives in deciduous and mixed forests. It is a member of the Paridae family, also known as tits. It has a distinct black cap on its head, a black bib underneath, and white cheeks. It has a white belly, buff sides, and grey wings, back, and tail. The bird is well known for its vocalizations, including its fee-bee call and its chick-a-dee-dee-dee call, from which it derives its name.

Phil Ineson is a chair in Global Change Ecology at the University of York. Ineson is particularly noted for his work with stable isotopes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Sutherland Elton</span> English zoologist and ecologist, 1900–1991

Charles Sutherland Elton was an English zoologist and animal ecologist. He is associated with the development of population and community ecology, including studies of invasive organisms.

The marginal value theorem (MVT) is an optimality model that usually describes the behavior of an optimally foraging individual in a system where resources are located in discrete patches separated by areas with no resources. Due to the resource-free space, animals must spend time traveling between patches. The MVT can also be applied to other situations in which organisms face diminishing returns.

Christopher Miles Perrins, is Emeritus Fellow of the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology at the University of Oxford, Emeritus Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford and His Majesty's Warden of the Swans since 1993.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Animal migration tracking</span> Used to study animals behavior in the wild

Animal migration tracking is used in wildlife biology, conservation biology, ecology, and wildlife management to study animals' behavior in the wild. One of the first techniques was bird banding, placing passive ID tags on birds legs, to identify the bird in a future catch-and-release. Radio tracking involves attaching a small radio transmitter to the animal and following the signal with a RDF receiver. Sophisticated modern techniques use satellites to track tagged animals, and GPS tags which keep a log of the animal's location. With the Emergence of IoT the ability to make devices specific to the species or what is to be tracked is possible. One of the many goals of animal migration research has been to determine where the animals are going; however, researchers also want to know why they are going "there". Researchers not only look at the animals' migration but also what is between the migration endpoints to determine if a species is moving to new locations based on food density, a change in water temperature, or other stimulus, and the animal's ability to adapt to these changes. Migration tracking is a vital tool in efforts to control the impact of human civilization on populations of wild animals, and prevent or mitigate the ongoing extinction of endangered species.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maerl</span> Coralline red algae

Maerl is a collective name for non-geniculate coralline red algae with a certain growth habit. Maerl grows at a rate of c. 1 mm per year. It accumulates as unattached particles and forms extensive beds in suitable sublittoral sites. The term maerl originally refers to the branched growth form of Lemoine (1910) and rhodolith is a sedimentological or genetic term for both the nodular and branched growth forms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stable isotope ratio</span> Ratio of two stable isotopes

The term stable isotope has a meaning similar to stable nuclide, but is preferably used when speaking of nuclides of a specific element. Hence, the plural form stable isotopes usually refers to isotopes of the same element. The relative abundance of such stable isotopes can be measured experimentally, yielding an isotope ratio that can be used as a research tool. Theoretically, such stable isotopes could include the radiogenic daughter products of radioactive decay, used in radiometric dating. However, the expression stable-isotope ratio is preferably used to refer to isotopes whose relative abundances are affected by isotope fractionation in nature. This field is termed stable isotope geochemistry.

Patricia (Pat) Anne Nuttall, OBE is a British virologist and acarologist known for her research on tick-borne diseases. Her discoveries include the fact that pathogens can be transmitted between vectors feeding on a host without being detectable in the host's blood. She is also a science administrator who served as the director of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (2001–11). As of 2015, she is professor of arbovirology in the Department of Zoology of the University of Oxford.

Martin Stevens is a British sensory and evolutionary ecologist, an underwater photographer and a natural history and popular science writer. He is known for his work on disruptive coloration in animal camouflage.

Tamara Susan Galloway is a British marine scientist and Professor of Ecotoxicology at the University of Exeter. She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2019 Birthday Honours.

Sarah Wanless is an animal ecologist in the UK and is an expert on seabirds; she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and is Honorary Professor at the Universities of Glasgow and Aberdeen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ontogenetic niche shift</span> Ecological phenomenon

Ontogenetic niche shift is an ecological phenomenon where an organism changes its diet or habitat during its ontogeny (development). During the ontogenetic niche shifting an ecological niche of an individual changes its breadth and position. The best known representatives of taxa that exhibit some kind of the ontogenetic niche shift are fish, insects and amphibians. A niche shift is thought to be determined genetically, while also being irreversible. Important aspect of the ONS is the fact, that individuals of different stages of a population utilize different kind of resources and habitats. The term was introduced in a 1984 paper by biologists Earl E. Werner and James F. Gilliam.

References

  1. ↑ Rands, Sean; Parnell,Andrew C.; Inger, Richard; Bearhop, Stuart; Jackson, Andrew L. (2010). "Source Partitioning Using Stable Isotopes: Coping with Too Much Variation". PLoS ONE . 5 (3): e9672. Bibcode:2010PLoSO...5.9672P. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0009672 . ISSN   1932-6203. OCLC   768092582. PMC   2837382 . PMID   20300637.
  2. ↑ Jackson, Andrew L.; Inger, Richard; Parnell, Andrew C.; Bearhop, Stuart (2011). "Comparing isotopic niche widths among and within communities: SIBER - Stable Isotope Bayesian Ellipses in R". Journal of Animal Ecology. 80 (3): 595–602. Bibcode:2011JAnEc..80..595J. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2656.2011.01806.x . ISSN   0021-8790. OCLC   909877238. PMID   21401589.
  3. ↑ Bearhop, Stuart; Adams, Colin E.; Waldron, Susan; Fuller, Richard A.; Macleod, Hazel (2004). "Determining trophic niche width: a novel approach using stable isotope analysis" (PDF). Journal of Animal Ecology. 73 (5): 1007–1012. Bibcode:2004JAnEc..73.1007B. doi: 10.1111/j.0021-8790.2004.00861.x . ISSN   0021-8790.
  4. 1 2 "Professor Stuart Bearhop". University of Exeter. Retrieved 17 April 2019.
  5. ↑ Bearhop, Stuart (1999). Stable isotopes in feathers and blood as a tool to investigate diet and mercury dynamics of seabirds. jisc.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Glasgow. OCLC   59538188. EThOS   uk.bl.ethos.323395.
  6. ↑ Katja Schmid (21 October 2005). "Winterbekanntschaft mit Folgen" (in German). Retrieved 17 April 2019.
  7. ↑ "Birdfeeders Can Both Help And Harm Bird Populations". Science Daily (Press release). 7 April 2008. Retrieved 17 April 2019.
  8. ↑ Matt Walker, ed. (27 May 2010). "Bird feeding: concerns raised over benefit to UK birds". BBC News . Retrieved 17 April 2019.
  9. ↑ "Gannets don't eat off each other's plates, researchers show". Phys.org . 6 June 2013. Retrieved 17 April 2019.
  10. ↑ Kerstin Viering (5 February 2014). "Vögel Der Spatz mag Berlins Unordnung". Berliner Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 17 April 2019.
  11. ↑ Kerstin Viering (10 January 2015). "Hilft das winterliche Füttern den Vögeln eigentlich?" [Does winter feeding helps the birds?]. Badische Zeitung . Retrieved 17 April 2019.
  12. ↑ Roland Knauer (23 November 2015). "Das Vogelhäuschen als Draht zur Natur" [The birdhouse is a link to nature]. Stuttgarter Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 17 April 2019.
  13. ↑ Peter Walker (31 December 2016). "China banning ivory trade in 2017 in 'game changer' move for Africa's elephant" . The Independent . Archived from the original on 25 May 2022. Retrieved 17 April 2019.
  14. ↑ "Climate change has mixed effects on migratory geese". Phys.org. 5 January 2017. Retrieved 17 April 2019.
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