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">Barn swallow</span> Migratory passerine bird, and the most widespread species of swallow

The barn swallow is the most widespread species of swallow in the world. It appears to have the largest natural distribution of any of the world's passerines, ranging over 251 million square kilometres globally. It is a distinctive passerine bird with blue upperparts and a long, deeply forked tail. It is found in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. In Anglophone Europe it is just called the swallow; in northern Europe it is the only common species called a "swallow" rather than a "martin".

<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">Tit (bird)</span> Family of small passerine birds

The tits, chickadees, and titmice constitute the Paridae, a large family of small passerine birds which occur mainly in the Northern Hemisphere and Africa. Most were formerly classified in the genus Parus.

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

The coal tit or cole 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 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">Northern gannet</span> Species of bird

The northern gannet is a seabird, the largest species of the gannet family, Sulidae. It is native to the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, breeding in Western Europe and Northeastern North America. It is the largest seabird in the northern Atlantic. The sexes are similar in appearance. The adult northern gannet has a mainly white streamlined body with a long neck, and long and slender wings. It is 87–100 cm long with a 170–180 cm (67–71 in) wingspan. The head and nape have a buff tinge that is more prominent in breeding season, and the wings are edged with dark brown-black feathers. The long, pointed bill is blue-grey, contrasting with black, bare skin around the mouth and eyes. Juveniles are mostly grey-brown, becoming increasingly white in the five years it takes them to reach maturity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kleptoparasitism</span> Type of animal feeding strategy

Kleptoparasitism is a form of feeding in which one animal deliberately takes food from another. The strategy is evolutionarily stable when stealing is less costly than direct feeding, such as when food is scarce or when victims are abundant. Many kleptoparasites are arthropods, especially bees and wasps, but including some true flies, dung beetles, bugs, and spiders. Cuckoo bees are specialized kleptoparasites which lay their eggs either on the pollen masses made by other bees, or on the insect hosts of parasitoid wasps. They are an instance of Emery's rule, which states that insect social parasites tend to be closely related to their hosts. The behavior occurs, too, in vertebrates including birds such as skuas, which persistently chase other seabirds until they disgorge their food, and carnivorous mammals such as spotted hyenas and lions. Other species opportunistically indulge in kleptoparasitism.

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

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 Her Majesty's Warden of the Swans since 1993.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology</span> UK environmental science research organisation

The UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) is a centre for excellence in environmental science across water, land and air. The organisation has a long history of investigating, monitoring and modelling environmental change. Research topics include: air pollution, biodiversity, chemical risks in the environment, extreme weather events, droughts, floods, greenhouse gas emissions, soil health, sustainable agriculture, sustainable ecosystems, water quality, and water resources management.

<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">Trophic level</span> Position of an organism in a food chain

The trophic level of an organism is the position it occupies in a food web. A food chain is a succession of organisms that eat other organisms and may, in turn, be eaten themselves. The trophic level of an organism is the number of steps it is from the start of the chain. A food web starts at trophic level 1 with primary producers such as plants, can move to herbivores at level 2, carnivores at level 3 or higher, and typically finish with apex predators at level 4 or 5. The path along the chain can form either a one-way flow or a food "web". Ecological communities with higher biodiversity form more complex trophic paths.

<i>Ceratophyllus gallinae</i> Species of flea

Ceratophyllus gallinae, known as the hen flea in Europe or the European chicken flea elsewhere, is an ectoparasite of birds. This flea was first described by the German botanist and entomologist Franz von Paula Schrank in 1803.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aquatic-terrestrial subsidies</span>

Energy, nutrients, and contaminants derived from aquatic ecosystems and transferred to terrestrial ecosystems are termed aquatic-terrestrial subsidies or, more simply, aquatic subsidies. Common examples of aquatic subsidies include organisms that move across habitat boundaries and deposit their nutrients as they decompose in terrestrial habitats or are consumed by terrestrial predators, such as spiders, lizards, birds, and bats. Aquatic insects that develop within streams and lakes before emerging as winged adults and moving to terrestrial habitats contribute to aquatic subsidies. Fish removed from aquatic ecosystems by terrestrial predators are another important example. Conversely, the flow of energy and nutrients from terrestrial ecosystems to aquatic ecosystems are considered terrestrial subsidies; both aquatic subsidies and terrestrial subsidies are types of cross-boundary subsidies. Energy and nutrients are derived from outside the ecosystem where they are ultimately consumed.

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.

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.

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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