School of Conservation Sciences

Aliens land in CCEEC

A topmouth gudgeon the fish being used by CCEEC researchers

On-going research on alien (non-native) species by the Centre for Conservation Ecology and Environmental Change has received a welcome boost by news that the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) will fund their latest proposal.

The project, lead by Dr. Rob Britton, is to use the topmouth gudgeon - a fish originating from SE Asia - as a model species to determine how populations of non-native species may develop from only a small number of founders, and the subsequent implications of these populations for native flora and fauna.

The work follows previous studies and publications by CCEEC researchers that have used topmouth gudgeon to answer questions on the ecology and management of non-native species, including work recently published by Dr. Rudy Gozlan in the International Journal of Parasitology. As this paper identified that topmouth gudgeon are a 'healthy host' of a pathogen that has caused high levels of mortalities of wild and farmed fish elsewhere in the world, it has received much international press attention.