Karen is based at Edinburgh Napier University since 2012, leading the Animal and Plant Sciences Group at the School of Applied Sciences. Formerly she worked for the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Research -ZMT, coordinating a 10-year project in coastal Brazil and investigating marine invertebrates in Vietnam. Her research focuses on the structure and functioning, restoration/enhancement and management of coastal ecosystems, including the functional diversity and life cycles of associated benthic invertebrates and their behavioural and physiological responses to environmental change (e.g. underwater noise, climatic stressors). She has been working in mangrove and seagrass blue carbon habitats and in biogenic reefs. Karen’s work in Brazil has recently changed the country’s national regulatory policy for mangrove crab fisheries.

​Projects: e.g.: As Good as (G)Old (CoReNat) - Comparing Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of Restored and Natural Mangroves in Indonesia; Microlanding - The Role of the Gill Symbiome for the Terrestrialisation of mangrove crabs; Effects of Noise on Aquatic Invertebrates in a multistressor context; Chronobiology and Fisheries Management in Brazil

Supervising: Ed Bolger, Craig Stenton, Hannah Lee, Petra Harsanyi, Elisabete Rodriguez, Stasa Kamplet (MRes)

​Keywords: mangroves, blue carbon biota, restoration/rehabilitation, functional diversity, marine invertebrates, aquatic noise, multiple stressors, fisheries