Project 1: Measuring River Health by Monitoring Invertebrate Movement with Citizen Scientists

Supervisor(s)

Stefan Pulver, (Pyschology and Neuroscience, Centre for Biological Diversity), Iain Matthews (Biology, Centre for Biological Diversity), Chris Sutherland (Maths and Statistics, CREEM), Rebecca Lewis (Biology, and Buglife Scotland)

Project Description

Rivers worldwide face unprecedented multiple threats from pollution, drought, flooding, and climate change. There is an urgent need to monitor river conditions to target remedial conservation efforts, a task that exceeds the capacity of government agencies alone. Monitoring the abundance and behaviour of aquatic macroinvertebrates provides a window into the health of rivers. This project will develop imaging techniques and an analytical workflow to enable quantification of aquatic invertebrate behaviour and movement in response to multiple environmental stressors, allowing earlier diagnosis of river health decline. We hypothesize that monitoring motor activities in specific species can infer the presence of early-stage, sublethal environmental stressors

Subject areas and keywords

Neuroethology, ecology, biodiversity, rivers, behavioural imaging, machine vision, machine learning

Skills & Requirements

Applicants should hold, or expect to achieve a 2:1 honours degree or equivalent in biology, neuroscience or related discipline. Applicants are expected to have aptitude in both laboratory based and fieldwork based research. The student will receive training in invertebrate biodiversity monitoring, and learn to use behavioural imaging, machine vision, and machine learning based approaches both in the field and lab.

Further details and application process

This project has been awarded IBANS Research Bursary of £1000 for research expenses. If you are planning to apply for this project, first contact the supervisors, Dr Stefan Pulver ([email protected]), Dr Iain Matthews ([email protected]), Dr Chris Sutherland ([email protected]) and Rebecca Lewis ([email protected]) to discuss eligibility and obtain approval. Once an agreement is reached, you can proceed to submit your formal application.