• Question: why did you choose to be a theoretical ecologist?

    Asked by johnfraser to Edd on 22 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by samueleason.
    • Photo: Edward Codling

      Edward Codling answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Hi johnfraser! 🙂

      I originally did a maths degree. At the end of my degree I started to find some of the maths courses a bit too abstract and difficult to engage with. However, I then did a course on ‘mathematical biology’ where we applied the maths we had learnt to problems in biology and ecology. This really excited me and so I decided to study this more and did a PhD where I used maths to look at animal movement behaviour. Since then I have also used maths and computer simualtions to study fish populations and how to maintain sensible fishing levels for sustainable fish stocks. This work was used by the EU to change some of their fishing policy about cod! I have since started to look at more general problems relating to animal behaviour – how they interact in groups for example, or how animals might use different cues such as sound to navigate.

      I don’t think I ever made a definite decision to do theoretical ecology – I just carried on studying things I enjoyed and found myself doing more and more ecology stuff because that is what I found interesting!

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