After completing my undergraduate degree in Zoology, I spent some time in ecological reserves in a number of tropical locations including Mexico, Costa Rica, and Indonesia. Assisting with conservation work and carrying out research in the tropics then led me to starting a research masters in Tropical Forest Ecology here at Imperial.
My research project is part of the biogeography of landscape ecology work at the CALE lab. I am focussing on determining physiological stress in bird species of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest and how this changes with distance to range edge and forest cover. I am using ptilochronology, which involves measuring the growth bars on birds’ feathers, as a proxy to estimate stress.