We are the Foraging Ecology Research Group!
The Foraging Ecology Research Group
Above the research, outputs and accolades, it’s the people that make FERG great! Here are the wonderful people currently working in the group.
Jordan Cuff
Group lead and Newcastle University Academic Track Fellow
Foraging ecology, molecular ecology and nutritional ecology.
Lucy Mallard
Postdoctoral Researcher
Autonomous collection and analysis of airborne spores to protect fruit crops.
Rosy Christopher
PhD Student
Investigating predator-plant interactions as indirect drivers of ecosystem services.
Mia Croft
PhD Student
The impact of artificial light at night on optimal foraging, trophic networks and ecosystem services.
Will Dawson
PhD Student
Building belowground invertebrate trophic networks for soil health monitoring using metagenomics and ecoacoustics.
Basem Attar
PhD Student
Abundance, diversity and phylogenetic study of the faba bean foot and root rot disease complex in the UK.
Ben Hawthorne
PhD Student (primary supervisor: Darren Evans, Network Ecology Group, Newcastle University)
Applying eDNA metabarcoding for the biomonitoring and assessment of Environmental Land Management Schemes (ELMS).
Bea Dale
PhD Student (primary supervisor: Katherine Baldock, Northumbria University)
Quantifying the importance of tree floral resources for pollinators in urban landscapes.
Ainsley Hatt
PhD Student (primary supervisor: Heather Sugden, Newcastle University)
Evaluating the impact of ocean warming on marine biofouling.
Jack Longsden
PhD Student (primary supervisor: Heather Sugden, Newcastle University)
The effects of climate warming and heatwaves on in situ benthic marine community development.
Yiran Zhang
PhD Student (primary supervisor: Giles Bailey, Fine Arts, Newcastle University)
Building future community with Postbugs: a multicentric community building.
Eva Benkhoff
PhD Student (primary supervisor: Petr Klimeš, Czech Academy of Sciences)
Impacts of drought on the community structure of ants and spiders in subtropical leaf litter and their food-web interactions.
Shannon Goldberg
PhD Student (primary supervisor: Rinke Vinkenoog, Northumbria University)
Monitoring and detecting invasive species in anthrobiomes: Bees on the Faroe Islands.
Rebecca Wright
MBiol Student
Investigating the trophic ecology of wood decay arachnids using dietary DNA metabarcoding.
Dheeraj
MRes Student
Investigating nutrition as a driver of predatory arthropod biocontrol in arable fields over winter.
Bethan Griffiths
MRes Student (primary supervisor: Will Reid, Newcastle University)
You are what you eat: Combining metabarcoding and stable isotope analysis to gauge how the diet of the sub-Antarctic fish, Gobinotothen gibberifrons, changes with body size.
Fin Ryder
MPhil Student (primary supervisor: Fred Windsor, Cardiff University)
What are the roles of macronutrients in structuring freshwater food webs?
Ali Williams
Undergraduate Student
Assessing the spillover of beetle-parasitoid interactions from field margins using molecular analysis.
Thomas Welsh
Undergraduate Student
Investigating drivers of tree hollow earthworm community structure.
You?
New positions will be opening up all the time, but why wait? Get in touch!
Come and do some super cool research on foraging ecology, trophic interactions, molecular analysis, biomonitoring and more!
Past members
We’ve had the pleasure of working with some wonderful people who’ve gone on to do some amazing things!
Maggie White
Then: PhD Student (primary supervisor: Elizabeth Heidrich, Environmental Engineering)
Harnessing microbially mediated redox processes for sustainable water treatment.
Now: Senior Water Quality Modeller at Stantec
We work with some incredible researchers spanning several continents. These collaborations keep our science great and make the process all the more fun and rewarding.
Collaborators
Collaboration is what keeps science fun and interesting! Here are some of the amazing people we collaborate with most regularly (alphabetically).
James Bell
Keele University
Katherine Baldock
Northumbria University
Sam Cook
Rothamsted Research
Lorna Drake
Natural England
Darren Evans
Network Ecology Group, Newcastle University
Efrat Gavish-Regev
National Natural History Collections, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
James Kitson
Fera Science Ltd.
David Labonte
Evolutionary Biomechanics Laboratory, Imperial College London
Kyle Miller
Forest Research
Stano Pekár
Terrestrial Invertebrate Research Group, Masaryk University
Catherine Scott
McGill University
Josie South
University of Leeds
Seirian Sumner
University College London
Max Tercel
CIBIO-InBIO, Universidade do Porto
Michael Traugott
Universität Innsbruck
Shawn Wilder
Oklahoma State University
Fred Windsor
FreshNet Lab, Cardiff University
Ian Vaughan
Cardiff University
Foraging Ecology Research Group 