Current Member - Simon Evans
DPhil. Student
Simon Evans
Details
Name: Simon Evans
Position: DPhil. Student
Email: simon.evans@zoo.ox.ac.uk
Autobiography
I obtained my undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University in 2005, having specialised in ecology, and then completed the MSc in Biology (Integrative Biosciences) course at the zoology department here at Oxford University. It was on this course that I realised that my calling was for all things feathered and I became a research assistant at the EGI, working on a project investigating dispersal in great tits, both at Whytham and Bagley Woods. I have emerged from all this with some sort of ecological obsessive disorder, unable to think coherently about anything else.
Research Activities
Not wanting to be labelled as a one-trick pony, my research is largely split between two different foci, examining variation at two different scales: between individuals of a single population and between species. For the former I am examining how the plumage colour of great tits is influenced by the interaction between environmental and genetic factors, and how their coloration in turn influences their life-history. Interspecific variation is the second major focus of my research and makes use of genetic diversity data I have compiled from the published literature to examine potential causes and consequences of interspecific variation. When time allows, I turn my mind to penguins, parrots, island biogeography and bats.
Selected Recent Papers
Ager, D., Evans, S. R., Hong, L., Lilley, A. K. & van der Gast, C. (in press). Anthropogenic disturbance affects the structure of bacterial communities. Environmental Microbiology
Evans, S. R. & Sheldon, B. C. (2008). Interspecific patterns of genetic diversity in birds: correlations with extinction risk. Conservation Biology 22: 1016-1025. | Read abstract/paper online
Evans, S. R., Finnie, M. & Manica, A. (2007). Shoaling preferences in decapod crustacea. Animal Behaviour 74, 1691-1696. | Read abstract/paper online
