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Matt Zeale wins 2011 Vincent Weir Scientific Award

23 September 2011

Congratulations to Matt Zeale for winning the 2011 Vincent Weir Scientific Award for his PhD research. Matt received a cheque for £1000 for contributions arising from his PhD thesis on the conservation biology of the barbastelle.

Congratulations to Matt Zeale for winning the 2011 Vincent Weir Scientific Award for his PhD research. Matt received a cheque for £1000 for contributions arising from his PhD thesis on the conservation biology of the barbastelle. Matt’s thesis makes a substantial contribution to understanding the ecology of a threatened species, and includes chapters on habitat and roost selection studied by radio-tracking. Matt also used Maxent modelling to identify forests that would hold barbastelle populations in South Wales, and located 3 new colonies accordingly. Matt’s main achievement however was the development of a new method for the identification of insect prey in bat droppings by using PCR and cloning. The method was developed with colleagues at NERC’s Sheffield Molecular Genetics Unit and resulted in contributions to papers published in Molecular Ecology Resources and Current Biology.

The Vincent Weir Scientific Award, hosted by the Bat Conservation Trust, aims to reward and encourage research on the conservation biology of bats by young researchers and to recognise The Hon. Vincent Weir’s major contributions to the field.

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