Trinity College Dublin, Ecology and Evolution
During the first week of November I travelled to Kenya to help out on the Tropical Field Ecology course, run by Ian Donahue in the Zoology Department. Final year students from Zoology, Environmental Sciences, and Plant Sciences attended, and I was the postgraduate representative from the Botany Department. While I should under no circumstances be …
It may be an inconvenient truth in these conservation-focused times but we owe a debt of gratitude to the trophy hunters; the army officers and colonial-types who killed animals for sport and prestige. Without their considerable efforts, the vaults of natural history museums would be devoid of the skeletons and skins which form the bases …
The ESEB conference this August in Lisbon was not only about Drosophila and #superbock. Among the useful discussions and the interesting talks, a definite highlight came from our very own Kilkenny scaling man all about time perception and comparative analysis… Argh no I missed that one – apparently there was even a realistic Tiger Beetle hunting …
On Friday the 27th of September, as part of the Discover Research Night we opened the doors of the department to the public. We decided that since we have a museum full of some really cool stuff, we could use it to demonstrate some of the research in the department. Since the research night had …
Ah the summer, how I miss it! In mid-June I departed (on the horrendously long journey) to the beautifully sunny, tropical islands off the south-eastern coast of Sulawesi, Indonesia. No, I wasn’t on holidays; I am fortunate enough to call this part of the world my study site. During the six week visit, I aimed …
Among the multiple pressures currently driving decline in bee populations, little attention has been given to naturally occurring toxins in plant nectar. We carried out research this summer on invasive Rhododendron ponticum, a plant that contains neurotoxins in its floral nectar. We found this toxin to be lethal to honeybees, but apparently benign to the …
Continue reading “What I did this summer: Tortured some bees”
In the midst of the media circus surrounding our paper “metabolic rate and body size are linked with perception of temporal information”, I was invited to speak about our work on several radio shows. What followed was a mixture of immense excitement, nervous trepidation, deflation and all round good fun. This is only the third …
In the first of a two part post, Zoology lecturers address their students… This week marks the beginning of another academic year at Trinity College Dublin. We’re sure staff and students alike are greeting this news with a mingled sense of excitement, anticipation and dread (!). Near the end of last term, some of us …
And we’re back! The tea room is fuller, society stands are being dusted down to create the Front Square Fresher’s week gauntlet and venturing out of the office during the lecture change-over times will soon be inadvisable unless you have a particular affiliation for crowd control. Trinity is gearing up for the new semester and …
It has been estimated that less than 10% of global spending on health research is devoted to diseases or conditions that account for 90% of the global disease burden. These are mostly diseases of the world’s poorest people. The general public, and funding agencies, often equate third world diseases with the big three killers; HIV/Aids, …