Washington Post covers work of NTU Lecturer Louise Gentle

The Washington Post has featured the work and insight of Nottingham Trent University Principal Lecturer in wildlife conservation Dr Louise Gentle after her work appeared in The Conversation.

Through her work for the University, Dr Louise Gentle looks at how narwhals, ruffs and other animals that defy gender stereotypes.

In the article, Dr Gentle comments that: "It’s easy to assume all animals have a neat dividing line between the sexes because the differences in appearance between males and females can be so striking. But the more scientists learn about wildlife, the clearer it is that nature doesn’t have a rule book."

Drawing on her research work with NTU, Dr Louise Gentle explains: "To understand why some species evolved special traits or appearances, you need to know why the males and females of many species evolved to look so different from one another."

In the article, Dr Gentle provides some very interesting insight into the gender roles and behaviours of animales such as the mallard, the white neck jacobin, the narwhal, the barred buttonquail, the ruff, hyenas, and Asian sheepshead wrasse.

Researcher, science communicator and author

Dr Gentle is a Principal Lecturer and Leader of the Conservation provision for the School, including BSc (Hons) Wildlife Conservation BSc (Hons) Ecology & Conservation and FdSc Wildlife Conservation. She teaches undergraduate modules on Behavioural & Evolutionary Ecology, and Experimental Design & Data Analysis. In addition, she teaches on the Africa Field Course Module to Mankwe Wildlife Reserve, and supervises undergraduate dissertations and postgraduate research projects in ornithology, behavioural ecology and conservation.

Dr Gentle is an active researcher whose interests include Behavioural Ecology and Wildlife Conservation. She is also a science communicator, writing popular science articles for platforms such as The Conversation and The Naked Scientists, and has written a chapter in the book The Secret Science of Superheroes.

She undertook her degree in Biology at the University of Nottingham, before studying Conservation Genetics at the Universtiy of Leicester. She undertook her D.Phil (PhD) at The University of Oxford's Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology on 'Fat load and social dominance in the great tit, Parus major'.

She then worked as a Field Officer for the RSPB, a Biodiversity Information Officer for RECORD Biological Records Centre and a Research Assistant on a number of genetic studies. Dr Gentle joined Nottingham Trent University as a Lecturer, where she undertook a Post Graduate Certificate in Higher Education (PGCHE) and became a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). She has won several awards for her Outstanding Teaching, including the Vice Chancellor's Teaching Award.

Read the article in full.