People
Dr David MP Jacoby
Research Lead
I've always been fascinated by how and why animals - and I'm including ourselves in this - make the decisions we make. From an early age though, this fascination always led me into the marine environment where behaviour seemed even more of an enigma. As an impressionable young kid, it was always the sharks and rays that captured my attention the most. Today, elasmobranchs are considered amongst the most threatened groups of vertebrates on earth and yet our ecological understanding of many of the 1000+ species is virtually non-existent.
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I am a marine biologist and behavioural ecologist with a keen interest in social behaviour, what drives animals to aggregate and what implications this has for their conservation. Specifically, my research interests are in how individual animals move and interact through space and time and more recently how this knowledge can be used to improve the conservation and management of our aquatic environments. I head the NETLab that undertakes interdisciplinary research into the mechanisms that underpin behaviour, at different spatial scales, using network analyses, ecological modelling and animal tracking.​
d.jacoby[at]lancaster.ac.uk
Current group
Dr Lucy Mead
Postdoctoral Researcher
Lucy joined the lab in 2021 when she started her PhD based at the Zoological Society of London and Queen Mary University of London. Her research focused on the spatial and behavioural ecology of the Critically Endangered angelshark in the Canary Islands. Acoustic telemetry and environmental monitoring were used to explore movement, habitat use, behaviour and environmental preference, with a particular focus on climate change vulnerability and evidence-based conservation. This was a collaboration with the Angel Shark Project and co-supervised by Dr Adam Piper (ZSL), Prof Christophe Eizaguirre (QMUL) and Dr Gail Schofield. Lucy is currently continuing this work as a short-term postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lancaster. Lucy has a multidisciplinary background, with a BSc in Geography and MSc in Marine Systems & Policies (University of Edinburgh). She has worked across both marine and terrestrial settings and with fauna and flora, all with an interest in species response to environmental change and applied conservation.
lucy.mead[at]ioz.ac.uk
natasha[at]marosiesq.com
Natasha Marosi
PhD Candidate
Natasha joined the lab following several years of working with elasmobranchs on the Shark Reef Marine Reserve in Fiji as the Conservation Director for Beqa Adventure Divers.
She is a former criminal defense attorney, earning her JD from New York Law School, an MA in Forensic Psychology from John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a BA from Brooklyn College. In 2018 she founded the conservation initiative ‘My Fiji Shark’, and credits the sharks for fuelling her desire to study shark behavior and personality. Natasha’s PhD research with the University of Exeter CRAB is focused on the structure and function of social behaviour in a closed population of Bull Sharks aggregating at a human influenced site. She uses social network analyses to examine the drivers of inter-individual variation in sociality, in addition to acoustic telemetry and animal-borne video cameras to investigate whether social behaviour extends to free-ranging activities outside the study site. Her project is co-supervised by Prof. Darren Croft with additional guidance from Dr. Juerg Brunnschweiler and collaboration with Dr. Yannis Papastamatiou.
Dr. Mike Williamson
Postdoctoral Researcher
Mike rejoins the lab as a PDRA following the successful completion of his PhD in 2022 in which he used network analyses to explore the environmental drivers influencing the movement and behaviour of reef sharks in the British Indian Ocean Territory (London NERC DTP). Mike as has a wealth of experience studying marine vertebrates during six years working for the University of Queensland as the Research Officer for the Cetacean Ecology and Acoustics Laboratory, and as a freelance field technician for the University of St. Andrews. His current project is working with Dr Adam Piper (ZSL) tracking the movements and social behaviour of European eels in UK reservoirs.
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michael.williamson[at]ioz.ac.uk
Molly Fowkes
PhD Candidate
Molly is joining the lab as she begins her PhD at Lancaster University. She holds an MSc in Marine Biology and Oceanography from Bangor University, where she worked on mapping patterns of grey seal movements within tidally energetic environments in response to oceanographic drivers. Whilst doing her undergraduate degree, Molly worked on several outreach and social media projects to help communicate scientific findings to the public and promote protection of UK marine species. Her PhD research at LEC focuses on tracking social networks and behaviours of the critically endangered European Eel within the Abberton Reservoir, exploring movement ecology and the social dynamics in this species. This project is co-supervised by Dr Adam Piper (ZSL) and Dr Stephen Thackeray (UKCEH).
m.fowkes[at]lancaster.ac.uk
Xingchen Liu (Stella)
PhD Candidate
Stella joined the NETLab in 2024 to begin her PhD at Lancaster University, co-supervised by Dr Adam Piper (ZSL) and Dr Stephen Thackeray (UKCEH). She holds an MSc in Resources & Environmental Engineering from Yunnan University, China, where she contributed to the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition & Research programme and ran a blog that translated and explained the latest findings in fish ecology for a wider audience. Her doctorate focuses on the European eel (Anguilla anguilla) in Abberton Reservoir, Essex. Using high-resolution acoustic telemetry and Hidden Markov Models, the project will track how resident and introduced eels move, change behavioural states, and respond to environmental conditions within this closed system. The work aims to reveal whether land-locked eels retain migration-linked behaviours and to inform reservoir management and the wider conservation of migratory fishes.
x.liu81[at]lancaster.ac.uk
Alumni
Hannah Wood (2020 - 2024) PhD Using individual tracking data and environmental remote sensing to understand breeding seabird movement behaviour (Kings College London, Zoological Society of London)
Emma Deeks (2020) M.Res Computational Methods in Ecology and Evolution (Imperial College London)
'Effectiveness of the British Indian Ocean Territory Marine Protected Area enforcement vessel in overlapping with endangered elasmobranch species'
Grace Horberry (2020) M.Sc Marine Systems and Policies (University of Edinburgh)
'The effect of seabird nutrient subsidies on the spatial ecology of reef sharks in the British Indian Ocean Territory Marine Protected Area'
Alumni (pre - 2020)
IMP - Imperial College London
RVC - Royal Veterinary College
UCL - University College London
UEA - University of East Anglia
UOE - University of Exeter
UO - University of Oxford
UOP - University of Plymouth
UU - University of Ulster
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Edges represent shared species for project work
Current Collaborators
Joanna Barker, Zoological Society of London, UK
Barbara Block, Stanford University, US
Taylor Chapple, Oregon State University, US
David Curnick, Zoological Society of London, UK
Francesco Ferretti, Virginia Tech, US
Debbie Fogell, University of Kent, UK
Robin Freeman, Zoological Society of London, UK
Austin Gallagher, Beneath The Waves, US
Tristan Guttridge, Saving The Blue, US
Neil Hammerschlag, University of Miami, US
David Jimenez Alvarado, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, ES
Johann Mourier, Institut de Recherche pour le Dévelopment (IRD), FR
Eva Meyers, Museum Alexander Koenig, DE
Yannis Papastamatiou, Florida International University, US
Adam Piper, Zoological Society of London, UK
David Villegas-Ríos, Institute of Marine Research of Vigo (IIM-CSIC), ES
Yuuki Watanabe, National Institute of Polar Research, JP
