Professor Gareth Jones
Biography
I graduated from the University of London with a degree in Ecology, and then did my PhD on the behavioural ecology of birds at Stirling. I came to Bristol in 1985 to work on aerodynamics of bat flight, and was then awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship to combine my interests in ecology, behaviour and bat biology. I have worked on bats on 5 continents, with recent studies based in China, Madagascar, Malaysia, Malawi and Colombia. In 2010 I was awarded the Gerrit S. Miller Award at the University of Toronto in recognition of "outstanding service and contribution to the field of chiropteran biology." My recent research has focussed on conservation biology, especially global change biology and molecular ecology.
Activities / Findings
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Past climates shaped the current hotspots of genetic diversity for the grey long-eared bat, one of the UK’s rarest mammals, but future climate change threatens these biodiversity hotspots (Razgour et al. (2013) Ecology Letters DOI: 10.1111/ele.12158).
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Climate change has major implications for the future distributions of bats in Europe (Rebelo et al. (2010) Global Change Biology 16: 561-576) and Southeast Asia (Hughes et al. (2012) Global Change Biology 18: 1854-1865.
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Street lighting, including novel LED technologies, can have adverse effects on bats (Stone et al. (2012) Global Change Biology 18: 2458-2465.
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A trade-off occurs at the genetic level between vision and echolocation in bats (Shen et al. (2013) PLoS ONE 8(7): e68867.
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Molecular methods can be used succesfully to identify insect species in bat droppings (Zeale et al. 2011) Molecular Ecology Resources 11: 236-244.
Teaching
I teach Evolution and Diversity of Mammals (Level 1), Evolutionary Biology (Level 2) and a field course called 'Bats, Bugs and Biodiversity'.
Keywords
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Bats
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conservation
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molecular ecology
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global change
Methodologies
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Field experiments
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GIS
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molecular biology
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recording and analysis of ultrasound