Jordan Patrick Cuff

I graduated from Cardiff University in 2014 with a BSc in Biology, having particularly focused on ecological interactions and community ecology. My dissertation compared earthworm communities in different farmland habitats and crop types. I spent a year carrying out invertebrate surveys and monitoring blackbird and song thrush chicks and nests to assist a study on bird diet and habitat use in fragmented farmland habitats. I completed an MRes in Biosciences at Cardiff University in 2016, during which I explored the invertebrate communities of rot-holes in beech trees and how they differ with tree and rot characteristics. I also determined the volatile profiles of the heart-rot habitats of the endangered violet click beetle, Limoniscus violaceus.

My PhD project, titled "Nutrient-specific foraging and the role of spiders as aphid predators", involves the use of metabarcoding, analytical biochemistry, bioinformatics and advanced statistical modelling to investigate nutrient-specific foraging, with a focus on the predation of aphids by spiders in agricultural systems. My PhD is funded as part of BBSRC’s SWBio doctoral training partnership.