Zoology staff directory

Research interests

Research interests
Nomenclature and bioinformatics. Taxonomy provides the basis for understanding biodiversity. Overcoming the taxonomic impediment involves both having enough trained taxonomists and having taxonomic information available to those who need it. The EDIT project is designed to help to reduce the fragmentation in European taxonomic research and expertise and to coordinate the European contribution to the global taxonomic effort, in particular the Global Taxonomy Initiative, through an integrated initiative aimed at improving society? capacity for biodiversity conservation. Work Package 6 (Unifying Revisionary Taxonomy) will define and develop the means to provide access to the currently highly fragmented information sources. The approach will be to formulate the construction of expert networks in the form of distributed taxon-specific committees to manage taxonomic effort across institutions who will define closely what is needed from the cyber-environment for taxonomic Web content to be delivered. The ultimate aim is to promote the integration process and facilitate the spread of taxonomic excellence. http://www.e-taxonomy.eu/ and http://www.nomencurator.org/

Biological Wastewater-Treatment Processes. Ciliated protozoa (ciliates) are an important component of the microbial community in aerobic biological wastewater-treatment plants with about 175 species reported. They commonly number 50 million cells per litre in the mixed liquor of the activated-sludge process where their major role is the removal of dispersed bacteria by predation. It has long been known that ciliates can be used as reliable indicators of effluent quality in biological aerobic sewage-treatment processes. The advantage of using ciliates as bioindicators is that of speed, with an accurate prediction of effluent quality being available within an hour or two of sampling. Ciliates are rarely used on site in this way, however, mainly because of the difficulty that non-specialists have in identifying them. The main aim of this project is to produce a multimedia, user-friendly guide that can be used by specialists and non-specialists alike for both training and routine monitoring. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/research-curation/projects/wastewater-ciliate/

Diversity of the Protista. No mechanism yet exists to list all the microbial organisms present in a tiny sample from an ecosystem. Molecular techniques now permit the extraction of DNA and RNA from a sample which will inevitably contain material from many different individuals. Some individuals might be rare in the sample but important to the ecosystem function. Others might be dormant, but lend the ecosystem a measure of flexibility against changing circumstances. This project is evaluating method of untangling the wealth of information present in these nucleic acid sample, including assessing the efficiency of recovery, the means to count how many distinct species are present and finally to name them.

Eukaryotes from extreme environments. Life exists almost everywhere on the Earth. Archaea and bacteria are well known from many of the more extreme environments, but our knowledge of the extent of eukaryotic life is far more limited. Eukaryotes seem to be everywhere except for very hot sites, but why should this be so? What adaptations have been evolved to cope with these stressful situations. http://www.nhm.ac.uk/zoology/extreme.html

 

Current activities

Build a multimedia key to the protists in found sewage treatment
Coordinate Work Package 6 (unifying Revisionary Taxonomy) within EDIT
Develop methods for protistan diversity assessment using molecuar tools

Other Posts or Honoraria

	Japan Marine Science & Technology Agency (JAMSTEC) - Consultant
	Univ. Toyama, Japan - Visiting Professor
	Frontier Research Programme Deep-sea Environment -
1993 - 1995	Society for General Microbiology - Member of Council
1994 - 2001	Univ. Tsukuba, Japan - Visiting Professor
1995 - 2000	Society for General Microbiology - Publications Officer
1995 - 2000	Society for General Microbiology Symposium Series - Series Editor
1996 - 1997	DeepStar programme -
1999 - 2000	Microbiology Today - Editor
2005 - present	EDIT Network Steering Committee - Member

Employment history

1972 - present	Natural History Museum - Researcher, Dept. of Zoology

Higher education

1972	Queen Elizabeth College, Univ. of London - BSc (Hons)
1982	Univ. of Surrey - PhD

Publications

Warren, A., Salvado, H., Curds, C.R., ROBERTS, D.McL. & Seviour, R.J. 2006 (Accepted). Protozoa in activated-sludge processes. In Blackall, L. and Seviour, R.J. (eds) The Microbiology of Activated Sludge. IWA Publishing.

Ytow, N., Morse, D.R. and ROBERTS, D.McL. 2006. Rough set approximation as Formal Concept. Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics 10, 606-611.

Benjamin, E.L., Collins, M.W. and ROBERTS, D.McL. 2006. An inquiry into the morphology of Ciliate Protozoa using an engineering design approach. In Brebbia, C.A. (ed), Design and Nature III: Comparing design in Nature with Science and Engineering. 23-34.

Ytow, N., Morse, D. R. and ROBERTS, D.McL. 2001. Nomencurator: a nomenclatural history model to handle multiple taxonomic views. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 73: 81-98.

ROBERTS, D.McL. 1998. Eukaryotic Cells Under Extreme Conditions. In: Seckbach, J. (ed) Origin, Evolution And Versatility Of Microorganisms. Kluwer, The Netherlands. 163-173.

Yang Z. & ROBERTS D.McL. 1995. On the use of nucleic acid sequences to infer early branchings in the tree of life. Molecular Biology & Evolution, 12: 451-458.

Hirt, R. P., Dyal, P. L., Wilkinson, M., Finlay, B. J., ROBERTS, D.McL. and Embley, T. M. 1995. Phylogenetic relationships among karyorelictids and heterotrichs inferred from small subunit rRNA sequences: resolution at the base of the ciliate tree. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 4: 77-87.

Dyal P.L., Hope S., ROBERTS D.McL. & Embley T.M. 1995. Use of the PCR and fluorescent probes to recover SSU rRNA gene sequences from single ciliate protozoa. Molecular Ecology, 4: 499-503.

ROBERTS, D.McL. and Causton, H. 1988. Silver nitrate impregnation of ciliated Protozoa. Archiv f?r Protistenkunde, 135: 299-318.

Curds, C. R., Gates, M. A. and ROBERTS, D.McL. 1983. British and other freshwater ciliated protozoa. Cambridge University Press for Linnean Society of London and Estuarine and Brackish-water Sciences, Cambridge. [v], 474p