Fieldwork

The first teaching I did on this course was to lead the first morning moth show. In this activity, I have the joy of introducing moth diversity to the students. Each night, I set up two large moth traps and by the morning they are like treasure troves, filled all kinds of beauty. There were some very familiar species such as the celebrity Peppered Moth, Biston betularia, that many students recognise from their school texts books, or the amazing Silver Y, Autographa gamma, which is quite an unassuming brown moth that always gains people's respect and admiration when they learn that it can migrate thousands of miles to reach our shores. One of the species that is most characteristic of this field site is the Cream-spot Tiger, Arctia villica; a large and exuberant moth with a heavy orange and red body and cream-spotted wings. This is a species I have only ever found here at Slapton Ley. Because of its furry body, large dark eyes, and fiesty personality, it is quite mammalian in its vibe, and is another favourite of the undergrads. I encourage the students to gather around and look through the boxes themselves, picking out any moths they find so that they can look more closely and try to identify them. Inevitably, a lot of moths fly out and soon the whole classroom is buzzing with life, often with students scrambling up onto the chairs and tables to try and catch them. We found that this is a very effective way to wake everyone up first thing in the morning. I can only hope to be able to spark some of the same delight that I felt the first time I saw what beautiful winged creatures live among us. 

The initial plan for this field course had been for me to focus a lot more on the aquatic invertebrate biology than I did on previous years. My knowledge of freshwater insects is pretty good from a life of amateur pond-dipping and reading for curiosity's sake, but it's not something I've ever worked on. I was excited to be able to do something a bit different and revise my identification skills in that area. As preparation for the course, I dug out my old freshwater field guides and practiced distinguishing between the nymphs of different dragonfly groups by visiting the ponds across the road from my house in Oxford. However, an unexpected illness of one of the botany professors meant that the remaining botanist would have been left alone in their teaching. We re-shuffled a bit and I ended up spending most of the course immersed in the enthralling world of plants. 

Despite never doing a botany module in any of the almost-three biology degrees I have, I do have a good appreciation for and familiarity with plants. I picked up all of my botanical knowledge by reading and spending an immeasurable amount of time wandering around looking at things. It is my opinion that plant life is cruelly under-appreciated. Anyone who thinks that plants are not exciting surely has never watched a fly writhe as it is trapped by the glistening glue of a carnivorous Sundew. Presumably they have never wandered through a grassland and happened upon the world-changing beauty of a Bee Orchid. Maybe no one ever told them how liverworts have persisted for more than 400 million years, and once grew under the feet of dinosaurs. Maybe they never realised that the peculiar purplish-brown heads emerging leafless from the ground are not dead flowers but actually parasitic Orobanches who defy even the most fundamental rules of being a plant, and have abandoned photosynethesis in exchange for a life of energetic thievery. It was a privilege for me be able to teach in these botanical classes and introduce the students to the anarchic family Apiaceae, that can one day present itself to you as a carrot, and the next as Poison Hemlock. Assisting in the lab-based dissection classes allowed me to heal the wounds of regret I felt from the opportunity I missed by not learning botany in my bachelors.

As luck would have it, I did also get to join some of the freshwater invertebrate sessions in the last couple of afternoons of the field course. As I stood on the wooden jetty overlooking a huge expanse of mirror-like lake water, with students probing through nets full of pondweed all around me and enormous dragonflies sailing around my head, I reflected on how grateful I was to be there, and how I need to ensure that I get to do lots more fieldwork in future.

No fieldwork is complete without doing some moth recording. At least, that is my strongly-held belief. I had wanted to bring my own trap but didn't have space in my luggage as I'd had to pack for an additional two weeks exploring the country after the course (see my "Travel & Photography" pages for photos of those adventures). I was very happy to learn that someone else had brought light trapping equipment with them that they would set up to attract any flying ant males in the area. Fortunately for me, the local moths were not aware that the trap was not intended for them, and they dutifully appeared in their hundreds. I photographed every one and managed to identify many of them, but many more are still waiting to be matched up with their names.

I am grateful to my supervisor Stuart West, the Oxford Biology Department, and the European Research Council (ERC) for the funding that allowed me to attend this course.

Out by the ley, I helped Dr Michelle Jackson introduce the ecology of invertebrate life under the water, leading the students through the taxonomic groups that they might expect to see. In particular, these sessions helped them to make the connection between insect abundance and diversity, and the environmental conditions that affect it. By learning to recognise species with low or high tolerances to pollution, we can know when water is clean and when it has been polluted. We were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the sensational green-eyed dragon, the Norfolk Hawker (Aeshna isoceles), which is an endangered species that had never before been recorded in that part of the UK. It is believed that the traditional ranges of many species including the Norfolk Hawker have been shifting recently as a result of climate change.

The field course's previous moth-expert, Will Langdon, hadn't been able to join us this time, and so the duty of trapping and exhibiting moths each day became my responsibility. This was my first time ever seeing the beautiful Cream-spot Tiger, Arctia villica. We also had a particuarly good year for representatives of the Sphingidae Hawk-moth family: Several bat-like Poplar Hawks (Laothoe populi) came to the trap, along with a bright pink Small Elephant Hawk (Deilephila porcellus). We were even fortunate enough to be able to show the students the UK's largest moth: The gargantuan pink-and-black striped Privet Hawk (Sphinx ligustri).

The field course was a wonderful experience, but also exhausting. I was outside and starting work by 7 each morning to bring the traps back in and record all the moths before breakfast. I covered a lot of distance moving between the botany, freshwater, and terrestrial invertebrate sessions, back and forth through the woodlands and fields surrounding the field station. I stayed awake late each night to put the set the moth traps up again after dark. On one occasion, I saw a hedgehog shuffling around just outside the lab. On another, a red fox carrying a black and white bird ran so close past me that it almost brushed my leg. 

On our final day, we managed to find a couple of hours of free time, and Jonathan knew of a site nearby where very rare bee was supposed to live. We drove down there, and headed down through a field of long grass to a cliff edge. The climb down to the rocky sore was a bit sketchy, and this was obviously not a site normally visited by beach-goers. As soon as we were down we could see countless bees of different shapes and sizes flying in and out of tiny holes in the cliff face. We caught a few to look at them more closely and identified them as the Long-horned Bee Eucera longicornis, which had once been common across the UK but is now very rare. The species was badly impacted by the loss of 97% of the UK's flower-rich grasslands during the 20th century when agriculture intensified and many meadows became overgrazed and over-fertilised. The human modification of coastal areas has also impacted them, as they need unaltered soft cliff faces to nest in. Orchid-lovers may know of this bee because it is the pollinator of the much-loved Bee Orchid, Ophrys apifera, which now has no choice but to self-pollinate since the decline of its insect partner. Someone once told me that this is the reason we can find such strange variants of O. apifera flowers in the UK; because selection to mimic E. longicornis is gone (I still need to fact-check this). It was realy exciting for me to see this species for the first time, but this was not actually the bee that Jonathan was looking for. Amazingly, the rare Long-horned Bee is the host of an even rarer bee: The Six-Banded Nomad, Nomada sexfasciata. These bees have a cuckoo-like lifestyle where they lay their eggs in the nest of the Long-horned Bee and when the larvae hatch, they eat the pollen that is stored in the burrow. The Nomads depend on strong populations of their hosts and so, as E. longicornis declines, N. sexfasciata has been pushed closer and closer to the brink of extinction. This stretch of unmarked craggy coast is potentially the only remaining site where they still live. Despite our best efforts, we couldn't find them.

However, New College's own Professor Jeremy Thomas discovered the essential association of the butterfly with its ant host. After this realisation, it became viable to reintroduce the species to the UK by importing individuals from Sweden. With conservation efforts now focusing on the ant almost as much as the butterfly, the Large Blue is once again thriving. I went along with a small group of fellow New College biologists to see the butterflies for myself. With Jeremy's guidance, we managed to see them laying eggs and I even photographed a mating pair.

I had the opportunity to help out with the moth show each morning, which was then led by fellow doctoral researcher Will Langdon. In this role, I saw some amazing things: One night, we were visited by not just one but six Striped Hawk-moths, Hyles livornica, which neither of us had ever seen before. Will also found a Thrift Clearwing, Synansphecia muscaeformis, that is an extremely odd-looking moth, appearing almost more like a fly or a wasp. Finally, the infamous Netted Pug, Eupithecia venosata, should probably be renamed the Not-To-Be-Netted Pug, based on how many times Professor Peter Holland tried to catch one! 

Aside from my entomological duties, I also helped out with some of the botany classes. In the lab, we gave bouquets of flowers to each pair of students and then we introduced them to the taxonomic families contained within. Out on the coast, Professor Stephen Harris delivered a class on seaweed diversity and ecology. Lacking any knowledge of seaweed besides what bladderwrack looks like, I listened with interest, and then helped out by guiding the students through making sense of the lifeforms they found around them. I also joined Professors Peter Holland and Sebastian Shimeld as they challenged their marine biology group to find as many phyla as possible. The experience was great, and when I was asked if I would return to help on next year's trip, I immediately agreed.

Orchid surveying

While living in Wales again for the first time since finishing school, I got really into cycling, and intended to make the most of the "one form of exercise per day" rule that was imposed. I would reguarly cycle thirty or more miles from my doorstep and around the National Park. I could spend a whole day outside without ever being within a mile of another human being. I recognise that I was exceptionally fortunate to have a mountain range as my playground during the pandemic, and know that for many people it was a horrendous few years. For me, it was wonderful. I worked on my masters thesis from my laptop in the mornings and evenings. During the daytime, I was outside exploring the bogs and grasslands of Snowdonia (or Eryri, as it is known in Welsh). Not long after I finished my masters thesis, I was offered a job as a research assistant and started working remotely for the University of Oxford.  I also began volunteering at Treborth Botanic Garden, helping with maintenance of their tropical greenhouses and the flower beds and meadows outside. 

I was especially interested in grassland conservation and its implications for agricultural practices, and so I had a lot of questions about the biodiverse hay meadows they were restoring. Using native seed stock from an established meadow elsewhere, they brought back plants that had been lost by over-fertilisation and excessive mowing. The hay meadow is a beautiful, semi-natural habitat. Without human intervention, the equivalent would be created by large herbivores moving around and grazing patches of land. With the low densities of wild herbivores and the ability to roam naturally over huge distances, the pressure on grasslands would be gentle enough to allow flowers time to bloom and set seed, ensuring their return the next year. As the differently grazed patches grow back at different times, this creates a mosaic of available niches for wildlife to fill. Hay meadows support a plethora of flowering plant and insect species, as well as birds that feed on them. To replicate these conditions in an isolated patch of land and with no large herbivores, the gardeners cut the hay usually only once per year at the end of summer. 

Some of the most beloved flowers that you can find in healthy hay meadows are orchids. They need very low-nutrient conditions because of their unique adaptations including a symbiotic relationship with an underground fungal network. Over the summer, I had set myself the challenge of finding as many different orchid species as possible in the countryside around my house. The best places to look are boggy nature reserves and ecologically- managed meadows. I was asked if I would help survey the hay meadows at the botanic garden and see what species are present. A team of three of us counted every orchid plant we could find. I still remember the number: 1,335. Nearly all of these were the same species, Dactylorhiza fuchii, with a few possible hybrids. There was one particularly bizzare individual that caught our attention, and after consulting the experts we learnt that it is peloric, meaning that it has a rare mutation that changes the symmetry of the flowers.

Moth recording

Treborth Botanic Garden has moth records going back to 1986, likely the most comprehensive moth dataset in North Wales and one of the best in the UK. Every night, a Robinson trap is set up outside, and in the morning someone comes by to record and release the insects captured. I had the opportunity to help continue this tradition and served as the moth recorder for a couple of days each week during the pandemic. It was a solitary task, with me cycling there from my house and sitting for a few hours photographing and identifying each individual. I had been moth recording for a while in my own garden with my dad, but at the botanic garden, using a larger and more effective trap, the numbers were much higher. I saw many species for the first time here, such as the Brown China-Mark, Elophila nymphaeata, whose caterpillars live entirely underwater, feeding on aquatic plants. I also saw the Peach Blossom moth, Thyatira batis, which on paper is quite common but a species I had always wanted to see after finding it particularly striking from its photo in my identification book. It was also my first time personally trapping the famous Buff-tip moth, Phalera bucephala, which is almost perfectly camouflaged as a broken twig. I remember the particular difficulty in distinguishing between the Carpets, who are amazingly variable in appearance and have several close relatives who frequently visit. When Bangor University brought a group of undergraduate biology students to the garden for a day trip, I put on an interactive moth show for them. I introduced some of most charismatic species, and told them about the diversity and ecology of moths around the world.

Treborth has records of more than 400 species of macro moth on their site, and by looking at how some populations have declined or increased over the years, we can get clues about how the environment has changed. Daily meteorological records are also kept. This provides the opportunity to compare variations in moth numbers with climatic fluctuations: As far as I know, this still remains to be done. These records have enormous potential for scientific analyses.

Studying the effects of agriculture on insect populations

My research involved calculating insect diversity and abundance at numerous sites throughout the rainforest, and then analysing how it was affected by proximity to agriculture. One of the factors I considered in my analyses were whether the sampling sites were primary or secondary forest. Primary forests are the original, natural, often ancient woodlands where we would expect to find the highest diversity of species. Secondary forests on the other hand have been heavily impacted by human activities: These are areas where extensive deforestation has occured, canopy cover is much sparser, and the trees are generally much younger. Often non-native shrubby species can be found here, and as a result we expect species diversity to be lower overall. To look only at the effect of proximity to agricultural land, I standardised my sampling sites by only looking at primary forest. As expected, I found that the species diversity of flying and foliage-dwelling insects was significantly lower when sampled near the agricultural land, likely as a result of habitat loss and insecticide use. This result can be taken as evidence that the harmful impacts of certain agricultural practices are not limited to the sites of agriculture, but also spill out into the surrounding areas including places supposedly protected from human activity.

I am grateful to my field guide Moses who stopped me getting lost in the forest, to my mum for all the help with the logistics of this project, and to Professor Adam Hart for his supervision.

Moth recording

While at the field station, I set up a light trap each night on the edge of the rainforest. My intention was to record all the species found, as well as the weather conditions, and then provide a reference guide for the field station. This wasn't the main aim of my research, just an extra project on the side. The moths were very different to those I'd seen in the UK. Noticely, Ugandan insects can grow to much larger sizes, with some wingspans wider than the length of my hand. A lot of the moths had transparent windows in their wings, which is very rare in temperate moths. I could just about recognise families that were familiar to me, but otherwise the identification was extremely difficult and the vast numbers of insects I was trapping each night rapidly became overwhelming. I was advised to collect some specimens to make identification easier, and so to my regret, I did. This was deeply unpleasant work. I love moths, not as collectable objects, but as tiny living beings. Not feeling very committed to my murderous collection project, what began as me letting a few individuals fly free here and there rapidly became me abandoning the mission all together. Instead, I tried to photograph each insect in the hope that I could get identifications online. The identification process never ended up being successful enough to make a reference guide, and suspect there is just so much undescribed biodiversity in the area that no one knows what everything is. It may well be true that the only way we can scientifically describe these species is by killing and collecting specimens. With the rate of species extinction globally it's possible that we will lose countless creatures without ever knowing they were here. True as that may be, I still very sad every time I remember those I killed. Since this experience, I have managed to avoid doing any more lethal sampling, and I advocate for others to do the same whenever possible. Entomology has a big culture of killing insects as the default way of studying them. I think that it's time we reconsider this, and evaluate seriously whether this is really necessary in most entomological research.

Part of the field course in Mankwe involved us designing and conducting our own research projects. I knew that I was keen to do something involving insects, and so were two of my friends. Our supervisor Professor Adam Hart helped us to figure out exactly what we should look at, and in the end we had a plan to study the effects of different burn regimes on insect abundance and diversity. 

In very dry habitats such as the savannah and scrub of South Africa, wild fires are almost inevitable. In some places, controlled burns are used as a tool to stop wildfires from getting out of control. The idea is that if a strip is burnt, there isn't enough substance left for it to catch fire again, and so it acts as a barrier for a wildfire, stopping it from spreading further. Fires can also be used create heterogeneity in a landscape, with patches with different levels of sequestration, theoretically increasing the number of niches available for species to fill. We tried to test this by comparing the insect species at different sites in the reserve.