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Student project ideas
Britain is home to a wonderful variety of mammals, many of which are unfortunately threatened. Luckily for them, the UK is also home to many motivated students working hard to understand and conserve mammals.
Tracks and signs workshop with Bob Cowley
Are you an undergraduate or masters student looking for an idea for your research project?
Check out the project ideas below or download the pdf to see the full list.
Just make sure to let us know if you are planning to carry out one of our suggested projects. Or if you have another project idea you’d like support with, we’d be happy to help! Get in touch with our Education and Training Officer here.
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Information is lacking on the distribution and density of mammals commonly found in the UK. One way to collect records of a species is to use transect surveys. This method requires systematic or random routes within a habitat to be walked, recording mammals that are seen. Mammal Mapper is a free smartphone app that will allow students to collect effortbased data. By recording the transect route as well as mammal observations, analyses can be adjusted for survey effort. Students can also compare locations where they did, and did not, record mammals. For more advanced analyses, students can also undertake distance sampling. Students can work in pairs on their data collection and divide the analysis either by species or by research question.
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Road casualty data can provide important information on mammal distributions and trends. In addition, the Mammal Society has been working on collecting more data of mammal fatalities on roads to develop strategies to mitigate road casualties. However, most data are available only at a large spatial scale. What is now needed is fine-resolution data on the habitats at locations with and without road casualties.
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Camera traps are a non-invasive way of detecting many of the larger British Mammals. They can also be adapted for use with small mammals using a baited camera-trap box and an inexpensive lens (contact us for further details).
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Footprint tunnels provide a non-invasive way of detecting hazel dormouse presence. In the Mammal Society’s Red List of British Mammals, the hazel dormouse is classified as Vulnerable. Therefore, it is important to continue to build knowledge and records of this species, particularly in non-traditional habitats (e.g. bramble thickets, hedgerows, etc.)
Finding Funding
Accessing funds for research, conferences, and events can feel like an endless task!
Check out our guide, produced by one of our Youth Ambassadors to get started.
How you can share your research
Mammal Society offers a number of ways you can spread the word about your work whether through a paper or a blog.
Mammal Review
Mammal Review is the Mammal Society’s quarterly international scientific journal of mammal research and review studies, covering all aspects of mammalian biology and ecology. It is owned and published by Wiley and has an impact factor of 4.927. You can find the author guidelines here.
As of 2020 a new agreement between Wiley and Jisc means that if you are a UK-based researcher at a participating institution, you may now be able to publish open access in Mammal Review at no direct cost to you. Click here to see if you are eligible.
Mammal Communications
The Mammal Society’s online, open access journal is free and there is no publication charge. For students, it provides a great opportunity for anyone currently researching mammals to publish a short paper on their work. Research on any aspect of mammal biology is accepted, particularly on British and European mammals and we are particularly interested in papers evaluating current, or developing new, survey and monitoring techniques. All articles are peer reviewed prior to publication on the website. For more information on submitting a manuscript and to read published papers, visit the Mammal Communications section of this website.
Student spotlight blogs
We love to hear about your research and we now have a dedicated area of our website showcasing students’ work on a number of mammal-related projects. If you’re a student working on UK mammals (although we’ll throw in a few exotic mammals here and there!) and want to share your research, please get in touch with our Education and Training Officer, here.
You can share your research any way you see fit, be it a blog post, video, presentation or any other creative ways you can think of to explain your research – find our guidance document here.