Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program:
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Chris joined us after having just completed his PhD at the University of Aberdeen, where his focus was on the role of demography and dispersal in shaping colonization-extinction dynamics in a naturally fragmented population of small mammals (water voles Arvicola amphibious). Chris obtained a BSc. in Biological Sciences from the University of Brighton before moving to Aberdeen where he received a Masters in Ecology and Environmental Sustainability. For his undergraduate thesis, he evaluated the use of distance sampling methods (walked and driven transects) as an effective tool for measuring the abundance of a range of ungulates on a small private reserve in Southern Africa. His masters' thesis was a capture-mark-recapture study of a population of Tawny owls Strix aluco focusing on the effects of pulsed resources (irregular seed masts resulting in sporadic small mammal outbreaks) and seasonality (summer vs. winter) on survival. In addition to his academic endeavors, Chris has been involved in projects including; a large scale, long term monitoring program of carnivores in Southern Africa with a particular focus on the brown hyaena; the monitoring, control and removal of the invasive grey squirrel from North East Scotland; the monitoring, control and removal of the invasive American mink from the North of Scotland; and the conservation and reintroduction of the protected water vole. Chris' research interests involve spatial ecology, particularly (meta)population dynamics in f...