Hello, and welcome to my brand, sparkling new blog.
For those who don’t know me, I’m a postgraduate researcher, busy enjoying pursuing a PhD at the University of Exeter’s Centre for Ecology & Conservation (CEC) at the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC), Tremough, on the outskirts of Penryn, near Falmouth.
For a more formal version of the remit of my project and for some additional biographical details, I would suggest taking a look at my university profile page: http://biosciences.exeter.ac.uk/staff/postgradresearch/index.php?web_id=Sally_Luker
Meanwhile, in more user-friendly terms…
I spend my time playing with bugs (insects of the order Hemiptera) – looking for them, looking at them, identifying them, photographing them, sharing finds with friends and colleagues, finding out as much as possible about them, and generally working out what makes them tick (not literally, although that could be an interesting aside…). I’m especially interested in bugs of the non-native variety, notably those that spend their time in close association with plants, such as ‘sap-suckers’ (aphids, psyllids, scale insects and whiteflies), leaf-miners and gall-makers, and my research looks at how they function in native interaction networks (food-webs and then some).
If you’ve checked out the above link, you’ll know that my life isn’t lived solely in the pursuit of bugs-related knowledge, in that I have a broad natural history background, and spend a good deal of my time roaming fields, streets, cliffs, beaches, woods (basically anywhere – I’m not that fussy) recording anything and everything biological! Not only does this help to appease my not-so-latent list-making compulsion but has the added bonus of allowing me to make an important contribution to species distribution information and everything that stems from this. Plus, it’s fun, engaging and ultimately incredibly rewarding.
I’m fortunate in that I share my passions with my lovely family, my gorgeous botanically-minded Other Half and my now relatively long-suffering equally gorgeous 7-year-old Small Person, who herself, is proving to be an expert bug-hunter. Together, we live an arguably unconventional life in a little granite cottage, in a little granite village, in the far, far west of the little granite county of Cornwall.
Well, that’s me, and I’ll be back every now and again to share bug-related snippets and stories – so don’t go far!
