Development and evaluation of mosquito-electrocuting traps as alternatives to the human landing catch technique for sampling host-seeking malaria vectors

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 17:53:00 GMT

Development of new surveillance and control tools and evaluation of a trapping method (The Electric Grid Trap, EGT) as a tool to monitor malarial vectors (mosquitoes), offering an exposure-free replacement to the Human Landing Catch (HLC) approach.

OptoSwim - a technology to improve production of fish in intensive aquaculture systems

Mon, 06 Oct 2014 19:01:00 BST

The OptoSwim technology, created by Dr Sunil Kadri and Dr Neill Herbert, employed electronics and software designed and developed by staff of the College's Bioelectronics Unit. The device creates moving light pattern within a fish farm cage, creating the illusion of a moving background that the fish respond to by swimming together as a shoal. The lights are configured to trigger the optomotor response of the fish, which provides an important visual cue to help coordinate schooling.

Flight movement control

Tue, 07 Oct 2014 11:57:00 BST

Biologists have long been interested in the behavioural and physiological mechanisms that regulate flight. The manipulation of physical activity of birds under captive conditions, however, faces the experimenter with some technical problems. We created a simple automated system, described in the article below, that allows control and manipulation of the flight activity of captive birds and use it for the first time to induce blood oxidative stress in male zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata).

Smart egg 2
Smart egg 2

Smart egg device

Tue, 07 Oct 2014 12:03:00 BST

A prototype of the eggs has been used to monitor human disturbance of kittiwakes nesting on sea cliffs. Getting information on heart rate and temperature during incubating is very tricky, since if you approach the birds of course they get disturbed and fly off. These 'smart' eggs overcome these problems by putting mini recorders inside artificial eggs, without the birds even knowing its been done.

Design and development of a low cost Microcontroller based Automated Spore Collector (ASC)

Fri, 09 Oct 2015 10:24:00 BST

Little is known about the distance or frequency of dispersal events in the majority of lichen species. In the field of non-lichenized fungi, spore traps have been used in order to catch airborne propagules, and when combined with genetic techniques to confirm species identity, these techniques have been used to gain insight into the scale of dispersal events (both spatial and temporal).