Beth Raine

I studied dung beetle - mammal interactions in tropical rainforests. Dung beetles can be used as an indicator group to identify the "health" of ecosystems, based on their reliance on mammal dung for survival. As they are quick and cheap to survey they have become very popular as an indicator group. Research to date had not explored the dietary preferences of dung beetles to identify whether they show generalist or specialist feeding preference towards mammal dung. I was also interested in this topic to explore how dung beetles, that you can find up to 60 species present in one area, are able to show generalist feeding preferences and still coexist. I conducted field work in the Atlantic Forest in Brazil to explore this, and carried out joint species distribution modelling for a large dataset collected from Malaysian Borneo to address dung beetles dietary preferences.

I work as an environmental consultant at Eunomia Research and Consulting; a consultancy that carries out a wide range of services for public and private sector clients. This ranges from environmental policy and law for the European Commission and working with countries to implement environmental regulations to helping private businesses improve their environmental impacts. I conduct a lot of data analysis relating to a range of these projects.

Was your D.Phil relevant to what you are doing now?

I use my data analysis, experimental design, statistics and coding skills, as well as critical thinking skills, writing and researching skills.

 

My work was recently featured in The Economist - a short communication published in Biotropica.

https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/01/09/dung-beetle…