I am a Community Scientist for the West Midlands and it is my job to organise a variety of interactive science projects and learning events in our local green spaces. I am most interested in species of invertebrate (e.g. bees, beetles and spiders) and how the environment influences where they live in the landscape. I will be studying how the distribution of green areas in Birmingham and the Black Country influences the number and type of bee species that live and nest there. This project will eventually need the help of a large number of volunteers if it is to be successful. Find out more about Adam.

I am the old one in the middle of the picture, part of the supervisory team and (notionally) the laboratory lead. I have a long-standing interest in many aspects of natural history (birds, insects, mammals and recently plants and fungi), but in a professional capacity I work predominantly on insect species in urban and riparian (river side) habitats. I am interested in understanding how environmental dynamics impact on biodiversity, especially species assemblages and populations. Find out more about Jon.

I am a Community Scientist for the West Midlands carrying out a PhD looking at how birds use green spaces in urban areas looking at the city of Birmingham as a case study. I am interested in how they move through the cityscape and which habitats they use. The decline of British birds is often in the news; I aim to understand what is important for birds in an urban environment so that this information can be used to improve towns and cities for the survival of bird species.

An important part of my work will only be possible with voluntary recording of bird sightings across the city of Birmingham. Find out more about Emma.

I am part of the supervisory team and have academic interests in biology that increasingly overlap with those of Jon Sadler and others working on various aspects of urban ecology. I am interested in bird breeding performance and how it is potentially influenced by human activities. Current interests include how food availability varies across urban gradients and how food supplementation (i.e. provisioning at bird tables) influences breeding, and bird life-history strategies. Over the last 15 years I studied bird reproduction (e.g. terns, grouse, kingfishers, songbirds) and examined the behavioural, ecological and physiological mechanisms that underlie their breeding performance. Recent interests in landscape ecology, population genetics and behaviour of human populations have taken me down an increasingly multi-disciplinary path to examining human-wildlife interactions (e.g. food supplementation, structural changes at habitat and landscape scales). Find out more about Jim.