Rory Wilson is currently Head of the Institute of Environmental Sustainability (IES), a professor of Aquatic Biology and post-graduate admission officer for biology.

He was born in Northamptonshire, England and studied Zoology at Oxford University before moving to the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town, South Africa to do his PhD, completed in 1985. He undertook post-doctoral work at Bamfield Marine Station, Canada and Gothenburg, Sweden, before working as a research scientist in the Institut fur Meereskunde, Kiel, Germany. He was awarded his chair by the University of Wales Swansea in 2004.

Research has been directed toward attempting to understand how warm-blooded, air-breathing animals, only secondarily adapted for an aquatic existence, manage to exploit the marine environment effectively.

Initially, work concentrated primarily on the group of  birds that was most extremely specialized for a marine lifestyle, the penguins   (Spheniscidae), using them as a model for other groups. Much time has been invested devising suitable methodology to  be able to study these birds at sea. This led to development of remote-sensing systems carried by the study animals to record their movements, behaviour and, at the same time to measure the physical characteristics of their environment. Using these systems it has proved possible to examine how marine animals partition their time in the three dimensional environment in which they forage and particularly with respect to the limitations that have been imposed on them.

Marine air-breathing animals are a special case for studying foraging strategies since they can only acquire food underwater where they can  operate for short periods before they have to return to the surface for gas exchange. Energy expenditure (as a function of swim speed, water temperature etc.) determines the time available and the depths that the animals can exploit while underwater so it can  be assumed that there is strong selection pressure for judicious management of all  relevant parameters. Recent work has focused on determining how seabirds and marine mammals may optimize foraging in their environment, maximizing investments in terms of time and  energy. Due to the universal importance of activity-dependent metabolic rate and the necessity that animals have of balancing their energy budgets, considerable time has been invested in attempting to quantify  energetic expenditure and gain in free-living animals. The development of new technology to study marine animals is now so advanced that it allows theoretical optimal foraging models to be examined in free-living marine species, something which has long been considered  intractable, even for terrestrial species where visual observation is comparatively  simple. Realization of this, and definition of basic optimal foraging parameters for marine vertebrates (which are often quite different from those encountered in  terrestrial systems), can be considered a long-term goal which is now practically possible.

Finally, this new technology is now being developed for a broad suite of animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate, terrestrial and aquatic. Current work thus involves shellfish and fish as well as terrestrial and marine mammals, birds and reptiles. The desire to see logging technology used in a variety of fields is based on a profound belief that this approach allows users to perceive their study animals and the environment in a particular and novel way. Cognisance of this is liable to lead to major new insights in the way animals function in their environment.

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Recent Publications

Storch, S., Hays, G., Hillis-Starr, Z., Wilson, R. P. (In press). Hurricane effects on diving behaviour of a Hawkbill turtle. Mar. Freshwater Behav. Physiol.

Ropert-Coudert, Y., Wilson, R. P., Gremillet, D., Kato, A., Lewis, S., Ryan, P. G. (In press). ECG Recordings in free-ranging gannets reveal minimum difference in heart rate during powered versus gliding flight. Mar. Ecol. Progr. Ser.

Wilson, R. P., White, C. R., Quintana, F., Halsey, L. G., Liebsch, N., Martin, G. R., Butler, P.J. (In press). Moving towards acceleration for estimates of activity-specific metabolic  rate in free-living animals; the case of the cormorant. J. Anim. Ecol.

Wilson, R. P., McMahon, C. (2006) Devices on wild animals and skeletons in the cupboard. What constitutes acceptable practice. Front. Ecol. Environ. 4: 147-154.

Ropert-Coudert, Y., Kato, A., Wilson, R. P., Cannell, B. (2006). Foraging strategies and prey encounter rate in free-ranging Little Penguins. Marine Biology 149: 139-148.

Ropert-Coudert, Y., Wilson, R. P. (2005). Reconstructing an animal’s past using micro-scripes; Trends and perspectives in animal-attached remote-sensing. Front. Ecol. Environ. 3: 437-444.     

Grémillet, D., Chauvin, C., Wilson, R. P., Le Maho, Y., Wanless, S. (2005). Unusual feather structure allows partial plumage wettability in diving great cormorants. J. Avian Biol. 36: 1-7.

Storch, S., Wilson, R. P., Hillis-Starr, Z.-M., Adelung, D. (2005). Cold-blooded divers: Temperature-dependent dive performance in wild Hawksbill Turtles Eretmochelys imbricata. Mar. Ecol. Progr. Ser.  293: 263-271.

Hochscheid, S., Maffucci, F., Bentivegna, F., Wilson, R. P. (2005) Gulps, wheezes and sniffs: how measurement of beak movement in sea turtles can elucidate their behaviour and ecology. JEME 316: 45-53.

Müller, G., Liebsch, N., Wilson, R. P. (2005). A new shot at a release mechanism for devices on free-living animals. Wildl. Soc. Bull. 33: 337-342.

Wilson, R. P., Scolaro, J. A., Grémillet, D., Kierspel, M. A. M., Laurenti, S., Upton, J., Gallelli, H., Quintana, F., Frere, E., Müller, G., thor Straten, M., Zimmer, I. (2005). How do Magellanic Penguins cope with variability in their access to prey? Ecol. Monogr. 75: 379-401.

Wilson, R. P., Reuter, P., Wahl, M. (2005).  Muscling in on mussels: New insights into bivalve behaviour using vertebrate remote-sensing technology. Marine Biol. 147: 1165-1172.

Editorial responsibilities

Marine Ecology Progress Series (Consulting editor)

Endangered Species Research (Consulting editor)

Polar Biology

Marine Ornithology

NERC Peer Review College, 2001-4