Alec Christie

At a glance:

Occupation: PhD (Zoology) at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

Qualifications: First class BSc Hons in Marine Biology at University of St Andrews, Scotland

Passions: Wildlife photography and videography, moth trapping, hiking and the outdoors

Sports: Korfball, archery, crown green bowls, geocaching and more...

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Biography:

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I was lucky enough to be brought up in a family that loved the outdoors, cared about wildlife and gave me the opportunities to follow my love of the natural world, no matter where it took me. Born in Knighton, Powys and growing up on the border of Herefordshire and Powys technically makes me Welsh - very useful when Wales are beating England in rugby. I've lived in a fair number of places, including Hampshire, Suffolk, New Zealand and the Yorkshire Dales. I recently graduated with a first class honours in Marine Biology at the University of St Andrews, after studying for a time in Australia, as well as conducting research in Turkey and even Antarctica. I met my amazing girlfriend and best friend, Grania, at St Andrews and we now live in Cambridge where I am studying for a PhD in Zoology at the University of Cambridge.

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Career interests:

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I am passionate about making the world a better place for wildlife through applied research and driving behaviour change in the general public around conservation issues.  More generally through my PhD I have become interested in improving the use of evidence in decision-making and making sure that published research goes on to make a real impact outside of academia. One of the best ways to influence people is through radio and television and so I am very interested in any opportunities to get more involved with science communication, documentaries and television presenting.

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Research interests:
 

My research aims to understand how we can assess the reliability and relevance of evidence (e.g. scientific publications and experiments) to provide people making decisions in conservation with tailored advice on the most effective ways of conserving species, ecosystems and biodiversity. n rate the quality, geographical applicability and effectiveness of conservation interventions so that species and ecosystems are conserved using more evidence-based approaches. Not all studies are created equal, with differences in sample size, effort and methodological design most likely influencing effect sizes in conservation intervention research. One of my first challenges is to disentangle how this occurs and how we can come up with an objective scoring method to judge studies' reliability (i.e. quality). I am also interested in spatial and taxonomic patterns in the usage of these designs. From this I hope to be able to provide recommendations to those who monitor and test conservation interventions about the most cost-effective and reliable experimental designs to use for particular taxa and habitats.

The end goal of the PhD is to contribute to the development of an online tool that would allow conservationists and practitioners in the field to find the best supported conservation intervention for them to use in their local patch for a given issue. I hope this will contribute to the automation of evidence synthesis and assessment as part of the ambitious Conservation Evidence project (conservationevidence.com).