18 December 2025
Our Senior Research Ecologist, Hannah Le Morvan, finished the year by attending the British Ecological Society’s Annual Meeting in Edinburgh, one of the largest annual gatherings of ecologists in the UK, where she presented her recent PhD work comparing the efficacy of passive acoustic detection against traditional live trapping for small mammal species native to Jersey.
The research looks at four species in particular: the bank vole, the wood mouse, the lesser white-toothed shrew, and Millet’s shrew. By comparing what acoustic monitoring picks up against what traditional trapping confirms in the hand, the work is helping build a clearer picture of where newer, less invasive survey methods can be trusted to do the job, and where hands-on trapping will likely remain necessary for the foreseeable future. Hannah also took on the role of session chair during the conference, alongside presenting her own poster.
We’re immensely proud of Hannah, not just for the quality of ecological consultancy our team delivers day to day, but for being part of the wider research community pushing to improve ecological understanding and develop better survey standards and methodologies. Work like this doesn’t just benefit Jersey. Findings shared at a conference like the BES Annual Meeting feed into how small mammal monitoring is approached far beyond the island, and that’s exactly the kind of contribution we want to be making.
Here’s to more of the same as the PhD work continues into the new year.
