In some very exciting news, Abbie and Harry both completed their PhDs this year. Waahoo! Massive congratulations to both of them!
PhDs are always a monumental feat (as signified by the change in title; those two little letters, “D” and “r”, represent a ridiculous amount of work) – and Abbie and Harry both did stellar jobs, producing very interesting and important bodies of work.
Abbie’s thesis centred on Investigating the role of traits in species invasiveness in marine and terrestrial ecosystems. She’s published two papers from her PhD already (here and here) with another two nearing the end of their journeys (watch this space!).
Abbie is now working as a Carbon Rating Scientist at BeZero and loving it!
Harry’s thesis was about Peatlands on the mend: using plant-microbe interactions to restore peatland structure and function. One of Harry’s papers is already out (here), with others to follow.
Since finishing, Harry has joined the AlienImpacts team as a postdoc at KCL (we’re delighted!). He spent his first month setting up plots for species monocultures at Cedar Creek Ecosystems Science Reserve in the US. Warm work but a nice change from the final throes of a PhD!
It’s always a little sad when students finish up, but it was fantastic (and incredibly gratifying) to see what they achieved and I am very excited about what they will do next. It was an absolute privilege co/supervising both of them, so I thank them for the experience and all they taught me.
Abbie’s PhD papers to date:
- Mabey, A.L., Catford, J.A., Rius, M., Foggo, A., & Smale, D.A. (2022). Herbivory and functional traits suggest that enemy release is not an important mechanism driving invasion success of brown seaweeds. Biological Invasions, 24: 3919-3934. link
- Mabey, A.L., Parvizi, E., & Fraser, C.I. (2021). Pathogen inferred to have dispersed thousands of kilometres at sea, infecting multiple keystone kelp species. Marine Biology 168: 47. link
plus other ones:
- Enders, M., Havemann, F., Ruland, F., Bernard-Verdier, M., Catford, J.A., Gómez-Aparicio, L., … Mabey, A.L. … Jeschke, J. M. (2020). A conceptual map of invasion biology: Integrating hypotheses into a consensus network. Global Ecology and Biogeography 29: 978-991. link
- Palma, E., Mabey, A.L., Vesk, P.A., & Catford, J.A. (2021). Characterising invasive species. In R. A. Francis (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of Biosecurity and Invasive Species. link
Harry’s PhD papers to date:
- Shepherd, H.E.R., Catford, J.A., Steele, M.N., Dumont, M.G., Mills, R.T.E., Hughes, P.D.M., & Robroek, B.J.M. (2021). Propagule availability drives post-wildfire recovery of peatland plant communities. Applied Vegetation Science 24: e12608. link
plus other ones:
- Shepherd, H.E.R., Atherden, F.S., Chan, H.M.T., Loveridge, A., & Tatem, A.J. (2021). Domestic and international mobility trends in the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 pandemic: an analysis of facebook data. International Journal of Health Geographics 20: 46. link
Ecological Change 