Greg McInerny

I am in the Second year of my PhD at the The Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Banchory and the University of Leeds.

Using experimental microcosms (the soil mite Sancassania berlesei) and simulation models, I am investigating how ecological and evolutionary processes, and their interaction, are affected by environmental change and spatial structuring. In particular my studies focus on:

•How the scale and type of spatial patterning in the environment interacts with individual, population and intra-specific processes to shape population structure.

•The impact of population structure on ecological and evolutionary processes that determine responses to perturbation and environmental change.

•How scale differences between processes may impact these responses to change.

•The power of dispersal in assorting population variation and its impact on projecting responses to a period of environmental change.

Answers to Dan's questions.....

What topics do you have some expertise in and would you be willing to help others learn them?

Ecology and evolution.

What do you want to learn?

I would like to learn some new skills for the investigation of dynamical systems occurring on networks, but it’s quite likely I will be side tracked on a personal novelty.

Also some exposure to more multidisciplinary subjects, (social networks, molecular biology, evolution in other systems), introduce food web ecology (evolution of ecosystems) and epidemiology into my research, improve my mathematics and programming; more team working skills are always on the list….

Basically lots.

Do you have any projects that would benefit from interdisciplinary approach?

Most probably more than I think. My interests in the context dependent interactions between environmental landscapes and ecological and evolutionary processes may have considerable analogies with problems in economics, computing and other network related systems.

Do you have any ideas for what sort of project you would like to attack this summer?

I have a number of things I’m interested in doing at the moment relating to the evolutionary consequences of ecological dynamics and their feedback. However I’d be keen to tackle a problem that is outside of my research area or arises from an idea in the summer school.

What's your favorite "big problem"?

The interaction between landscapes and agents, and their reciprocal evolution.

If you were given the opportunity to see where we were in one hundred years with respect to progress on one problem/subject, what would it be?

Evolution of social strategies in an increasing population.