30-Second Ecology

Mark Fellowes has been passionate about wildlife since an early age, spending his formative years in the wilds of the west of Ireland surveying birds and bringing bits of the countryside back home. He completed his BSc in zoology and a PhD in evolutionary biology at Imperial College London. Following a brief post-doctoral stint at the NERC Centre for Population Biology at Imperial, he joined Reading as a lecturer. Since then he became Professor of Ecology, and he is now Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University. Professor Fellowes has published several books and numerous papers in research journals. He undertakes a range of outreach work to engage the public and media in the importance of biodiversity and was listed as one of the UK’s 100 most influential men under the age of 40 by Esquire magazine.  Becky Thomas is an urban ecologist and Senior Teaching Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. Her research interests focus on the conservation biology and ecology of birds and mammals, specifically in how people's decisions affect the ecology of wild species. She is particularly interested in how human activity affects ecological interactions at a range of scales, especially in trying to uncover some of the unexpected and unpredicted consequences of our behaviour.