About the Author:

The author in his natural environment

That's me over there, in my natural environment!

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Since graduating with a B.Sc. in Zoology, getting my Ph.D. (ultrastructure of harvest-spider eyes) in two years and doing a year's Post-doctoral research (effect of drugs on the brain of the snail!), I have enjoyed many years' teaching at the University of Paisley (which was formerly Paisley College of Technology and is now the University of the West of Scotland) and for the Open University, as well as occasional lectures at Dundee University.

My research started by looking inside animals, but very quickly became more concerned with their relationships with their environment - and so I became an ecologist and have published on as wide a range of organisms as possible - diatoms, spiders, marine invertebrates, vascular plant communities, birds and even Homo sapiens (evolution and ecology)!

You can see more details in my formal, academic CV if you wish, which includes my research interests, lists of my published work , scientific reports and papers at meetings .

My work as an ecologist involved relatively simple sampling techniques, but then I needed computing power to help me analyse and interpret the data - from the early days of punched paper tape, then punched cards and on to floppy disks, but now with the benefits of the Internet. On my retiral from full-time academia, I left a ghostly presence in the form of a web site of my Honours Biology degree course in Biometry! Now that I have switched into remote, "visiting professor" mode and no longer accessible personally to students all the time, I am pleased to provide you with these web pages - I wish you luck with them.

Prof. Dave Curtis, March 2001.


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