News

Last week, Daniel Zeichner, Minister of State for Food Security and Rural Affairs and MP for Cambridge, visited the University of Cambridge Sainsbury Lab for a series of research demonstrations which included work from this department. Mr Zeichner's portfolio includes Environmental Land Management (ELMS), food security, agri-science and farmed anim…

We’re very pleased to announce that Professor Andrew Balmford FRS has won the inaugural Royal Society Environment Medal and Lecture for outstanding and sustained work in environmental science.The award recognises Andrew’s 'groundbreaking contributions to conservation science, having built transformative partnerships and redefining the landscape of …

We are delighted to announce that the Vice-Chancellor has appointed Professor Mark Brown to be the next Director of the University Museum of Zoology and Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Ecology.Mark is currently Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Conservation at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he holds a senior leadership positi…

New research has shown that some butterflies’ ability to smell others of the same species allows them to identify potential mates in areas where multiple species all look the same.The research was carried by a large international team including scientists based here in the Department of Zoology and at the Wellcome Sanger Institute.  Authors based h…

Research by members of our Agroecology Group features in a new exhibition Future of Food at the Science Museum in London.Prof Lynn Dicks, leader of the Group, spoke at the exhibition's opening event on Thursday 24 July and wrote the following summary:"Future of Food tells the story of how human ingenuity has provided food for people over the last 1…

The accelerating rise of AI-generated fraudulent academic papers is fuelling an existential crisis for evidence synthesis. But AI also presents hope - both in speeding up literature searches, and in detecting these very same phony papers. In a comment piece published in Nature today, Department of Zoology's Sam Reynolds, Lynn Dicks, Rebecca K Smith…

The Janet Moore prize is awarded for the best supervisor for Part II Zoology students, nominated by the students themselves. Janet Moore held a long-term association with the Zoology Department, with a strong focus on undergraduate teaching.This year the Prize has been awarded to Conall Stanforth.  Congratulations Conall! You can see from some of t…

Are you planning to submit a senior research fellowship application for funding competitions with deadlines after March 2026?We are seeking Expressions of Interest from early career researchers who wish to be sponsored for externally funded fellowships that will allow them to start an independent research group in our Department.  Target fellowship…

PhD student, Ritabrata Chowdhury, Insect Biomechanics Group, is first author of a recent paper in Biology Letters which uncovers a previously unknown interaction between plants, ants, and caterpillars in the rainforests of Borneo: kind of arms race between plants and insects.Macaranga trees house colonies of aggressive ants, protecting them against…

The University of Cambridge’s new Microscopy Bioscience Platform is unifying microscope facilities here in Cambridge.  These advanced microscope technologies offer researchers essential tools to expand the frontiers of scientific discovery. The new Platform includes the confocal microscopes here in Zoology, operated by Dr Matt Wayland.An example of…

We are delighted to share the news that Dr Eleanor Bladon, who is a postdoctoral research associate here in Zoology, has been awarded the Pathway to Independence Fellowship in Ecology and Conservation Biology at Clare College.The position drew over 50 high calibre applications internationally, and six applicants were shortlisted for interview.Dr Bl…

The Evolutionary Ecology group, led by Prof Andrea Manica, is interested in how animals respond and adapt to changing environments. The same tools used to study other animal species can be applied to humans.Research by the group and collaborators, reported in a paper published in Nature[LINK] today, shows how learning to thrive in diverse African h…

We are delighted to announce that the Vice Chancellor has appointed Professor Stephen Montgomery as the third Prince Philip Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Cambridge. The University created the Prince Philip Professorship in 2007, to mark the 30th anniversary of His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh’s Chancellorship.The B…

The findings of MegaMove a global UN-endorsed research project, were published this week in the journal Science. The project involved a team of nearly 400 international scientists from over 50 countries who have tracked more than 100 marine megafauna species, to identify the most critical locations in our global oceans for better marine conservatio…

Insect biodiversity change is an important research focus for our Agroecology Group.  Widespread declines in insect biodiversity have been attributed to a diverse set of anthropogenic drivers, but the relative importance of these drivers remains a puzzle.  One aspect of the group's research, as part of the GLITRS project, has focussed on combining …