Email: mrr22ldv@bangor.ac.uk

Twitter: @Miary_Ras

Supervisors: Dr Kirsty MacLeod, Dr Wolfgang Wüster, Dr John Wilkinson

I am an ecologist, a conservation biologist, and an uncontested reptile lover with a Master’s degree in Zoology and Animal Biodiversity from the University of Antananarivo, Madagascar. Recently awarded a NERC Envision Doctoral Training Program studentship, I am currently conducting a PhD on winter climate change effects on British reptiles as part of the MacLeod Lab, Bangor University. 

During my Master’s research, I had the opportunity to work on a short-lived chameleon (Furcifer labordi) with an unusual annual life history. I studied the phenology and growth plasticity under climatic variation of this chameleon and published the results in Salamandra. My findings sparked my interest in climate change studies and their impacts on biodiversity. I am particularly interested in exploring the effects of climate change on the physiology, distribution, and phenology of tropical and temperate species.

In my current PhD project, I will use the common wall lizard (Podarcis muralis) as a biological model to assess the physiological and behavioural effects of warming winter on reptiles under experimentally manipulated thermal conditions during hibernation. This will help us understand the effects of climate change on individual fitness. Moreover, I will examine the association of past thermal shifts – focusing on periods of significant winter warming – with the phenology and distribution of British reptiles. This will help us understand how reptile populations will interact under future climate scenarios.