Role at Cawthron
Calum is a freshwater and invasion ecologist. He researches how freshwater communities function and how the arrival of invasive species can disrupt native ecosystems. Throughout his career in the United Kingdom, Isle of Man, Netherlands, the United States, and New Zealand, Calum has developed considerable expertise in river health monitoring and catchment management, including environmental risk assessments and water quality monitoring using invertebrates, fish and chemical analysis, as well as pollution detection and control. He has worked with citizen science and farming groups to design river health monitoring programmes and recently developed biosecurity and risk assessments for freshwater fish farming and translocations.
Technical skills, experience and interests
Freshwater invasive species, especially freshwater shrimp species
Roles of predation and parasitism in biological invasions
Trout and salmon diets and ecology
Freshwater macroinvertebrate community ecology and taxonomy
Biosecurity and risk assessments related to freshwater translocations and fish farming
River health monitoring for citizen science groups and government
Freshwater legislation and resource consents
Science communication
Qualifications
BSc Biology. Stirling University, Scotland, U.K.
PhD Ecology, Queens University Belfast, Northern Ireland, U.K.
T90 Essential Enforcement (water) – Environment Agency of England and Wales
Professional Affiliations
Invasivenet
New Zealand Freshwater Sciences Society
Deputy Editor-in-Chief of ‘Management of Biological Invasions’
Associate Editor ‘Aquatic invasions’, ‘Bioinvasion Records’
