New guest blog on using genetics to steer management

If you had not noticed, our Research & Conservation Officer, Jonny Grey, has been coordinating an interesting set of guest blogs from young researchers who are currently chipping away at the coalface of academia. These guys are using state-of-the-art techniques to address important questions with regard to trout and other species, broader lake and river ecology, and aspects of management. So far we have had articles on issues ranging from abstraction to watercress, and a whole host in between. Have a quick search back through the blog, here. This is a great opportunity for those researchers to communicate their science to a wider, non-technical audience.

Today, we have a new contribution from Jess Fordyce, a PhD student from the University of Glasgow based at the Scottish Centre for Ecology and the Natural Environment (SCENE). She has been fascinated by the natural environment since childhood, especially anything aquatic. Her summer holidays were usually spent rummaging around rock pools on the beach for any animal life. To push this passion toward a career, Jess studied at the University of Glasgow in Marine and Freshwater Biology, where she became particularly passionate about freshwater ecology. Although Jess had not studied genetics, she found using genetics techniques to answer important ecological questions an exciting prospect and hence began a PhD looking at genetic, morphological and life-history structuring in brown trout.

Read about some of her aims, here.