Littlefair Lab: Research Projects

How can we make best use of technology to monitor and understand biodiversity? 

We use lab and field experiments to understand the resolution provided by genetic technologies such as environmental (eDNA) and investigate how these can be integrated with other disciplines and technologies to optimise large-scale monitoring (robotics, air quality monitoring and materials science!). 

Why do we work on this? 

Molecular technologies have been incredibly successful in expanding monitoring across the whole Tree of Life for aquatic ecosystems. Our lab’s origins are in freshwater habitat biomonitoring and now we’re expanding into the terrestrial realm. 

Most recently, the lab has been working on understanding and developing instrumentation to collect airborne eDNA (active and passive samplers as well as drones) to target terrestrial biodiversity. We work closely with end-users through Natural England and UKDNA-WG to co-create our sampling arrays to make sure they are field ready! We work with air quality scientists to understand the nature of and distance travelled by DNA particles. This is important for making inferences about the animal and plant populations that the DNA originates from, either in a research or policy context. 

Why are we interested in this upscale of biodiversity monitoring through technology? 

We want to understand finescale changes in biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in response to human impacts because data are often not collected with sufficient resolution to understand how ecology is dynamically and responsively changing. These impacts could be negative, such as habitat degradation, or positive, such as more rapidly understanding the impact of a new ecosystem management action. With genetic methods we also have a better chance of understanding whole-ecosystem responses, from bacteria and fungi to insects and vertebrates. My Future Leaders Fellowship (Round 8) supports our research into understanding spatio-temporal patterns of biodiversity, phenology and ecological networks using DNA collected by widely distributed networks of air samplers. Our outlook encompasses the whole tree-of-life approach so we can monitor entire assemblages e.g. with metabarcoding and metagenomics. 

A core part of working in our lab group is connection and collaboration with the world beyond academia. Increasingly, caring for biodiversity is shifting to become a cross-sector responsibility and challenge. We work with policy stakeholders, NGOs and industry to co-create these tools with end-users. A good example of this is collaborating with NatureMetrics and the Bat Conservation Trust through our Innovate UK “Innovation in Environmental Monitoring” grant in which our group is developing a new modelling framework to understand how protected species can be monitored with DNA. All of our lab members have the opportunity to work alongside and network with non-academic partners and we’re always happy to here from others.