David Masters

For a long time, I have been drawn towards the complex and fascinating ecosystem that is the savannah, having been to South Africa on multiple occasions. Similarly, marine ecosystems piqued my interest because of the unparalleled range in colour and size of species cohabiting in the same habitat, which I witnessed when on a trip to Australia, but also because of the mystery of such an unknown world waiting to be discovered.
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The former and a slight interest in endocrinology (I must admit) led me to study biology at Durham University and the latter motivated my choice of project for my master’s year. I have the opportunity to dive a little deeper metaphorically in to the marine world and understand what particular traits of species themselves, but also which species within a site, attract tourists. Further insight into these wildlife-based tourism (WBT) attractant species and traits is gained with the hope of predicting changes in the areas tourists will find these WBT attractants under projections of future climate change and human livelihoods. In the end, we hope to create a dataset with the species and traits that act as WBT attractants and assess the changes to WBT caused by climate change and human livelihood.

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Position: Integrated Masters (MBiol) Student

Supervised by: Prof. Stephen Willis

Contact Details: Department of Biosciences
                         Durham University
                         South Road
                         Durham DH1 3LE
                         Email: david.j.masters@durham.ac.uk​

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Education

2016 - Present  MBiol BioSciences, Durham University