Prof Mark Brown
- Director, University Museum of Zoology
- Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Ecology
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About
I grew up in Warwickshire and went to state schools in Southam, before studying Zoology at the University of Oxford.
I did my PhD on the behavioural ecology of seed-harvesting ants at Stanford University with Deborah Gordon. After a brief period of unemployment, I moved to ETH-Zürich where I did post-docs with Paul Schmid-Hempel on the evolutionary ecology of host-parasite interactions in bumblebees.
In 2002 I established my own research group at Trinity College Dublin, where we carried on working with bumblebees and their parasites, and also branched out into the conservation of wild bees. In 2008 we moved to Royal Holloway University of London, where we continued our previous work, whilst also conducting research into the impacts of agrochemicals on managed and wild bees.
We moved the lab to Cambridge in 2026, where I am also lucky enough to be the Director of the Zoology Museum.
Research
How do parasites and hosts interact with each other? How does this determine the health of hosts? How do anthropogenic changes affect these relationships? As ~50% of animal species are parasites, and all animals have parasites, addressing these questions is key to understanding the biology of the natural world. Our main study system is bumblebees, an ecologically important group of pollinators, and their parasites. Pollination is a key ecosystem service, which supports natural ecosystems and human health (through the production of food). Consequently, pollinator health is central to a functioning planet, providing an important applied focus to our research.
We focus on the following areas: (i) the ecology and evolutionary epidemiology of natural parasites in bees, (ii) the epidemiology and impact of emergent diseases in bees, (iii) the role of floral resources as ‘pharmaceuticals’ to mitigate infection dynamics, and (iv) the impact of agrochemicals on wild bee health. In addition, we have broad interests in the behaviour, ecology, and evolution of social insects, particularly the ecologically important bees and ants. We aim to deepen our understanding of fundamental biology, whilst providing evidence-based solutions to the challenges faced by wild bees in our anthropogenically-impacted world.