Welcome!

About Me

I am a postdoctoral researcher with the Allaby Research Group (ARG), based in the Life Sciences Department at the University of Warwick.

My research forms part of the Europe's Lost Frontiers project, and I am responsible for undertaking the ancient DNA analysis of sediment cores (sedaDNA) from Doggerland. For more information on the project, please go to the project web pages.

My PhD

My PhD research focused on how Great British bats have adapted to their particular niches, with a focus on dietary variations between species.

Supervisors

I was supervised by Professor Robin Allaby (University of Warwick)

Title of Thesis

Niche partitioning in Great British bats through dietary specialisation

Funding

This research was funded by NERC.

Research Overview

Bats provide a number of services to the UK; they are the primary predators of nocturnal insects (thus contributing significant economical advantages to agriculture), they distribute nutrients, and are excellent bioindicators of an ecosystem’s health. However, a number of UK bat species underwent severe declines in the latter half of the twentieth century.

The aim of this project was to improve our understanding of the role that food resource partitioning plays in species co-existence and in sympatric speciation. It is thought that dietary breadth is correlated with extinction risk, with specialists showing greater vulnerability and generalists displaying greater robustness. A comprehensive understanding of the different dietary niches occupied by bats is a highly valuable tool for informing conservation and management strategies.

The ARG has gathered a large repository of bat guano samples, from numerous species that have been collected from around the UK in all seasons. Advances in next generation sequencing technologies mean that it is now feasible to use a metagenomic approach to identify prey species fragments from each guano sample.

Dr Roselyn Ware

R.Ware.1@warwick.ac.uk