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Asked by Bradders to Cristiane, Nicki, Nikolai, Richard, Samuel on 11 Mar 2015.
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Samuel Ellis answered on 11 Mar 2015:
Well bacterial infections are a risk to everyone, therefore it is important that we learn more about how they happen so that we can develop better ways to treat them in the future. This is especially important now that antibiotic resistance is becoming such a problem in medicine!
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Nikolai Adamski answered on 11 Mar 2015:
Do you mean people as in “the public” or people as in “scientists”?
I’ll start with the latter one. We need to do research on crops to better understand them, which allows us to create better varieties of crops. This is important as our population is growing and the climate is changing. Also, we need to improve the way we do agriculture in general to make it more sustainable.
Why should the public be interested in my research? Food production is essential: Everybody needs to eat.
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Nicki Whitehouse answered on 11 Mar 2015:
We need to understand how species and ecosystems are affected by climate change so we can better predict their responses under changing scenarios and take actions to mitigate against these. I use the past to help guide those scenarios. Often many species and ecosystems suffer from what is know as ‘inertia’ – this means that species or systems can take a long time to fully respond to change. Many of our modern records only cover the last 50 years. My type of work provides us with long-term perspectives on change but also provides us with greater insights into the true nature of species. For instance, sometimes invasive are eradicated as they are seen as ‘bad’ introductions, but sometimes so-called invasive are in fact native! Looking at the long record gives us that perspective.
It also allows us to think of ecosystems as dynamic systems, rather than static systems. Much of nature conservation is managed for a static view when its very clear that if we take a historical ecological perspectives this is completely inappropriate. This gives us more options to consider!
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