Emily Shepard

I am interested in the mechanisms underlying animal movement and distributions, in particular, the movement of flying animals. The costs of flight are modulated by the physical environment, namely the weather, the landscape and the nature of the interactions between them. I use animal-attached technology to investigate how these factors affect the costs and patterns of avian movement and combine this with models to explore the ecological consequences of movement. Animal-attached loggers can now provide us with unprecedented information about wild animal behaviour, including its flexibility and costs, and I believe these data can play a vital role in the formulation of strategies for effective species-based conservation.