David Cooper

A biogeographer and zoologist based in Edinburgh - David's interests concentrate around wildlife and vertebrate biology, from lions and tigers to red foxes and chimpanzees. This has involved the studying the interactions between species and their environments through time, and the effects of captivity and diet upon zoo animals.

David started out as a geographer, gaining experience with geographical information systems and the modelling of species distributions through deep time. This has led to investigations into the geographical separation of populations, subspeciation, the effects of phenotypic plasticity, and how taxonomy may be both informed and misled by morphology. Recently David has been part of the Wellcome Trust funded project 'From Feed the Birds to Do Not Feed the Animals', which has taken an interdisciplinary approach to investigating the reasons why humans feed animals, and what effects this can have upon them.