It’s been a while since we posted about the lab, so we have accumulated three new news items!

First, Alison and I attended the Ecology and Management of Plant Invasions (EMAPI) conference in Lincoln, Aotearoa New Zealand back in September. Alison presented a flashtalk and poster on her recent vegetation survey work on Bermuda, and she won first prize for her poster! I gave a talk on recent work attempting to identify global hotspots of freshwater invasive plants that could threaten Ramsar wetlands.

Alison receiving her poster prize from the organizer (Phil Hulme) at EMAPI 2025

I gave a talk!

Second, we have a new PhD Student in the lab! Yanyan Wang has recently joined us from China, and will be studying how biotic interactions with plants shift along the invasion continuum. Welcome Yanyan.

Third and finally, I’ve been awarded a NERC Global Partnerships Seedcorn Fund, with collaborators at the South Atlantic Environmental Research Institute (Falklands), The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA). The project will involve developing methods to better detect new introductions of non-native invertebrates in two archipelagos at opposite ends of the Earth: The Falklands and Svalbard! More on that over the coming months.