Michelle Taylor

Dr Taylor has now left ZSL.

Curriculum Vitae:

• 2007-2011: PhD research student, Institute of Zoology and Imperial College London.
• 2006-2007: MRes in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, Imperial College London.
• 2005-2006: Programme Officer, Fauna & Flora International, Cambridge, UK.
• 2003-2006: Director and Science Advisor, ReefDoctor, Madagascar.
• 2001-2003: Marine Research Associate, UNEP-WCMC, Cambridge, UK.
• 1997-2001: BSc. Zoology (International) Hons. with a year abroad, University of Leeds.
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Research Interests:

The deep sea is the largest environment on Earth. It is also, proportionally, the least well known, sampled, and studied. The dominant habitats in the deep are sedimentary plains, however within this huge area there are smaller zones of hard substrata upon which cold water coral communities thrive. Hard corals, sponges, black corals and octocorals create habitat that harbour diverse, thriving communities to rival shallow water coral reefs.

My deep water coral samples are mainly by-catch specimens collected by Marine Resources Assessment Group observers in South Georgia’s bottom long-line Patagonian toothfish fishery. This project shall be one of the first studies to investigate by-catch from longlining. Some additional samples have been donated from research trips undertaken by the British Antarctic Survey.

I am interested in the systematics and diversity of deep water octocorals such as sea fans, soft corals, sea whips, sea pens, and blue corals. Unfortunately plasticity in morphological characteristics makes octocorals particularly difficult to identify to species level. I thus use molecular techniques, such as DNA barcoding and taxonomy, to identify and delineate species.

I intend to investigate the phylogenetics, gene flow and dispersal of deep water corals between potentially isolated habitats, along environmental gradients and over evolutionary time in and around the Scotia Sea. This project’s results are important in supporting fisheries management, conservation and protection policies in South Georgia.
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Supervisors:

My PhD is supervised by Dr Alex Rogers (Institute of Zoology) and Dr David Agnew (Imperial College London). I am funded by NERC with the Marine Resources Assessment Group (MRAG) as a CASE partner.