Matthew Hayes

I am a PhD student based at the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge. My research investigates the habitat requirements of endangered insects in the UK and how we can protect them from climate change. I graduated with a BSc in Natural Sciences from Durham University in 2015 and completed an MPhil in Zoology at Cambridge in 2017.

I constructed my undergraduate degree programme around my key areas of interest and undertook modules from several different departments focused on the themes of conservation, ecology and behaviour. During my final year at Durham I was given the chance to develop my long-held fascination with insects and wrote a literature review on the Large Blue butterfly, Phengaris (Maculinea) arion, looking at reasons for its original extinction and the success of its subsequent reintroduction to the UK.

After finishing my undergraduate degree, I then began researching the ecology and habitat requirements of another British Butterfly, the Duke of Burgundy, as part of the Cambridge University Zoology Department’s Insect Ecology Group. Working with the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust throughout this project enabled my work to directly inform invertebrate management on reserves in the UK.

Upon completing my Masters course, I started working at the University Museum of Zoology, studying historical insect specimens. My first role was as lead researcher on The Jenyns Beetle Voyage Project. The aim of this project was to catalogue, for the first time, part of the extensive insect collection held in the Museum store rooms, focussing on material collected by the famous naturalist Leonard Jenyns. In doing so, we gained information on how habitats and species have changed over the last few hundred years and made this data more accessible to a wider audience. This information has been passed to local conservation organisations to help guide them in their conservation efforts today. Following on from this, I started a project called ‘Butterflies through time’, financed by the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund. The project aimed to engage people with the natural world and environmental change, both past and present, by linking historical butterfly collections with contemporary conservation initiatives.

In 2021 I began my PhD, where my research is again partnered between the Insect Ecology Group at Cambridge and the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire. Through this collaboration I am investigating how we can manage nature reserves to protect species from climate change and extreme weather events.