Out this month, Zoology pt II graduate (2005) Brogen Murphy’s first novel, Wildlands published by Penguin Random House, is a survival story aimed at readers aged 10 and older. brogen_murphy_headshot.jpg The year is 2050, no humans are allowed in the Wildlands – a vast area in Britain where wolves, lynx and bison roam free...

Ashley Simkins, a PhD candidate in this department is the lead author of a study reported in the journal PLOS Biology, that highlights both conservation successes and the need for urgent action. Other co-authors from the Dept of Zoology were Prof William Sutherland, Prof Lynn Dicks and Dr Silviu Petrovan. The research was...

Nile Stephenson a postgraduate student in the Deep-time Ecology Group here in Zoology is the lead author of a new study that shows social media can help scientists track animal species as they relocate in response to climate change. The “range” inhabited by many species is shifting, and this is mostly tracked by formal...

Professor Rhys Green , Emeritus Honorary Professor of Conservation Science here at the Dept of Zoology, is the lead author of two reports, published this month in the journal Conservation Evidence , that conclude that a voluntary pledge made by UK shooting organisations in 2020 to replace lead shot with non-toxic...

Zoology was well-represented at the 7th International Conference on Oil Palm and the Environment, in Bali, Indonesia last month. The theme of the conference was 'Oil palm agro-ecological transformation: towards climate- and nature-positive agriculture'. The Conference is an important platform for academics, scientists...

A new study published in Royal Society Open Science reveals the significant potential of leveraging existing systematic evidence databases to mitigate hazards in the global food system. The research was led by Dr David Willer and Dr Silviu O Petrovan, who are based here at the Department of Zoology, with a team from the...

Picture credit: François Brassard Ants are among the most successful creatures on Earth, thriving in ecosystems worldwide. But what drives their extraordinary social complexity and division of labour? New research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) uncovers a key evolutionary shift that...

A paper published today in the journal Science, co-authored by Prof Andrew Balmford and other members of the Dept of Zoology’s Conservation Science Group, calls on the global community to recognise that rewilding productive farmland or forestry in industrialised nations may do more harm than good on a planetary scale...

A study published in the journal Genes and Development by Torsten Krude with co-authors Olivier Hyrien and Guillaume Guilbaud, sheds new light on the controversial field of mammalian DNA replication origins. These initiation sites for genomic DNA replication have been historically difficult to identify and their...

The previously hidden diversity of shrews has been revealed in research by recent Zoology MPhil graduate, Haobo Yuan and Dr Robert Asher , published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Entitled ‘The Origin and Evolution of Shrews’, the paper describes this investigation of shrews’ anatomy, palaeontology, and...

Research based in the Department of Zoology has potentially advanced the resolution of one of evolutionary biology’s greatest mysteries: how our complex brains evolved from simpler nervous systems. The research is described in a new paper, ‘An ancient apical patterning system sets the position of the forebrain in chordates...