Rosalind Mackey, Insect Ecology group, (Apr. 2, 2026)I was an MPhil by Research student last year, supervised by Professor Edgar Turner. My project assessed the effectiveness of a conservation installation from both entomological and social science perspectives. Butterfly banks are 18m-long E-shaped earth banks, designed to increase microclimatic variation and therefore protect insects from climate change. I extended an existing pitfall trap time series and started a new one on new banks, giving me before-after data for four sites, as well as a time series for two. I also investigated the public response to the banks, via designing a survey and interviewing reserve visitors, assessing their opinions of the banks and how much they had learned from them. By investigating the same banks from two very different angles, I was able to draw interdisciplinary conclusions on their effectiveness.
Conducting my own research for a year developed my scientific skills and experience, which I found very useful when interviewing for PhDs. I have gained confidence in planning, conducting and writing up scientific research, and I plan for my thesis to result in two peer-reviewed publications. I now have a PhD offer at the University of Reading, where I will be investigating how the timing of birds’ breeding has changed over the last 200 years using museum specimens, a sideways shift which would not have been possible without the transferrable and general scientific skills I picked up during my MPhil.
Prof. Turner was an incredibly supportive supervisor and his open-door policy meant we were always welcome to drop into his office to ask any burning questions. His lab group were all wonderful, supporting each other and sharing expertise. Our weekly lab meetings, joint with the Agroecology group, were another great way to share knowledge. On a department-wide scale, links between research groups were kept strong by postgrad talks every Friday afternoon. Between that and the two internal conferences, I felt well-prepared when I gave talks at several student conferences across Europe during my MPhil, as well as presenting a poster at the BES Annual Meeting, one of the largest ecology conferences globally.
The Department of Zoology is a wonderful place to be based. There is a real sense of community among the postgrads, fostered by annual events such as a seal-watching outing and the department’s summer and Christmas parties. I’ve made many friends whom I’ll keep in contact with as we continue our careers, strengthening my professional network.
Matilda Sibeth, Marine Behavioural Ecology Group, (Mar. 31, 2025)I am currently studying for an MPhil in the Marine Behavioural Ecology (MBE) Group, supervised by Dr James Herbert-Read. My project uses sandeels (Ammodytes tobianus) as a model system to understand how animals organise themselves spatially. Sandeels are a small, social inshore fish that alternates between burying in sand and swimming in the water column. Whilst buried, individuals are unable to use visual cues to assess the relative positions of their neighbours, so are likely to rely upon other sensory modalities to determine their spatial proximity to others. Therefore my project aims to understand whether sandeels have a preferred optimal packing density, the mechanisms that are used to maintain this spatial arrangement and the impact that spatial organisation in sediment has on coordinated emergences from sand.
Through my MPhil project, I have been able to delve into my interests further, explore new areas within the field of Behavioural Ecology and develop my research skills. This has only been possible because of the support from my supervisor and research group, and my access to the aquarium facility where my research is based. My work in the aquarium has taught me so much about animal husbandry and has provided me with extensive experience in carrying out behavioural experiments on live animals. My independence as a scientist has grown exponentially, and I now feel really prepared for a future in academia.
The community fostered by the Zoology department is incredibly friendly and welcoming. There are so many opportunities to meet researchers from other lab groups, whether this is via social events like the weekly happy hour and the Christmas party or through department seminars and graduate tea talks. I have loved my time in the Cambridge Zoology department so far, and would recommend studying for an MPhil here if you want to join an interesting and vibrant community of researchers whilst contributing to really exciting scientific discoveries.
Laura Chilver, Vertebrate Evolution Group, (Apr. 25, 2024)I am currently studying for an MPhil in the Head Lab under Prof. Jason Head, working on the ecological origins of the stem snake Dinilysia patagonica. Extant snakes are known to occupy a diversity of lifestyles spanning fossorial, terrestrial, aquatic, marine and arboreal habitats. The huge diversity and highly derived morphology have long inspired debate about snake ecological and evolutionary origins. Total group snakes (Pan-serpentes) originated on land during the middle early Cretaceous ~128 mya. Until recently, a lack of useful fossil evidence of stem snake fossils made interpretation of ecology, morphology, biogeography and behaviour of ancestral snakes difficult. Phylogenetic analysis has shown Dinilysia patagonica to be the stem sister taxon to crown snakes, representative of the basal condition in snakes.
In my project, I am looking at the evolution of a series of three crests in the middle ear of Dinilysia and a series of extant snake species with known habitats. The morphology crests and surrounding bone morphology have been shown to have a strong correlation with ecology. I am identifying the locations and homologies of these crests to find the most likely basal condition and evolution of these features in snakes. I will use this to test the ecological origins of snakes via the representative basal condition of D. patagonica to place them in fossorial, aquatic or arboreal ecologies based on the morphology of the inner ear and comparative anatomy with similar related taxa with known ecologies.
Conducting this research has only been possible thanks to the support from my supervisor, and the resources, like museum specimens and CT scans, available to me from the lab, the department, my college, and the university more broadly. Besides the technology and specimens provided by the department, I have also been able to attend many training workshops and courses through the university. These have been especially useful for improving my statistical skills and analytical tools. Outside of academic considerations, I also appreciate the strong sense of community found in Zoology - weekly happy hours, wellbeing talks, photography competitions, PhD talks and seminars all help foster a sense of community and facilitate connections among postgraduate students, and the department more broadly.