Approximately one in every 1,000 people in the UK is an amputee. Many lose their limbs as the result of tragic accidents or due to active military combat and for some amputees losing a limb is a loss of freedom.

Bryce Dyer (pictured) is part of a team of design engineers and clinicians studying prosthetics at BU’s Design Simulation Research Centre: “Many prosthetic limbs remain unused simply because they can be so uncomfortable over time,” he says.

Fitting a false limb is currently “a bit of a black art” says Dyer. Prosthetists traditionally require decades of experience to do their job successfully and are dependent upon the subjective feedback of patients, with no other method of measuring fit. Additionally, current technology does not allow for changes in volume – patients’ stumps may swell and contract. “It’s like having your feet change size on a daily basis and expecting your shoes to still fit comfortably,” says Dyer.

Led by Professor Siamak Noroozi, the BU team are turning an academic concept into a practical product that could lessen the misery of thousands of amputees.

They are creating a ‘smart socket’ – a lower-limb prosthetic which can adjust itself to fit the changing shape of the limb stump it connects with. The design team say the fit will be so comfortable that amputee servicemen may even be able to return to active combat.

Calling on combined expertise, BU’s School of Design, Engineering and Computing is using artificial intelligence to create a self-learning system that will measure interactions between socket and limb stump during the fitting and wear.

“It is very much at a research and development stage,” says Dyer. Currently the team are also attempting to miniaturise the technology to make it light and portable as well as incorporating wireless technology.

BU scientists have teamed with commercial partners at prosthetics and orthotics supplier Chas A Blatchford & Sons, who work with the Ministry of Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre in Surrey, where injured soldiers are sent following service in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“One of the great things about this industrial partnership is that we will be able to get feedback from the very kind of people we are trying to help,” says Dyer.

With better fitting false limbs, medical costs will fall, say BU designers. Prosthetists will be able to get it right first time and will require less experience to be able to do their job properly. Being agile enough to return to active service is a huge bonus for the rising numbers of amputee soldiers. “It will get them back in the field rather than being retired early or restricted in what they can do,” says Dyer.

Understanding how elite sprinters perform with artificial limbs or “blades” and how different types of prostheses compare is central to another strand of Dyer’s research. “Paralympic running world records are still being set on a near annual basis – the sport hasn’t settled down yet. I’m looking at how individuals should be grouped together or separated – how to give the fairest possible race.”

As well as informing future Paralympic Committees, the research will apply to disability in sport in general. Should someone who’s lost both limbs compete against a runner missing just one limb, for example? And how should technology be categorised, when variations in quality of false limbs may create substantial differences among international athletes?

“Some 30 years ago, it was all about enabling disabled people to take part in sport,” says Dyer. “But now the quality of performances and the sums of money involved are so great, there’s much more at stake. We don’t want to restrict technology but we need to find a way to measure it.”

BU researchers within the Human Resources and Organisational Behaviour department at BU’s Business School are working on as many as 15 projects at a time. All are linked around a common theme – how individual employees, groups and structures have an impact upon behaviour within an organisation.

Dr Davide Secchi collaborates with colleague Dr Hong Bui on a number of projects in the UK and abroad.

One joint project investigates how group behaviour might affect individual attitudes towards social responsibility at work. Using questionnaires and group discussions, the BU team assessed how attitudes might change according to group opinion. For instance, is it acceptable for businesses to relax environmental responsibilities when confronted by harsh economic times?

When respondents changed their minds as to what was acceptable behaviour after group discussions, Drs Bui and Secchi started to look for patterns.

Contrary to popular research, respondents in this case who had a change of heart were not necessarily those judged to be intellectually open, nor did how well the group knew each other appear to have any effect.

“Research shows it is easier to change your mind when confronted by opinions with people you already know, but this did not happen in our case – that was interesting,” says Dr Secchi, who alongside Dr Bui now plans to investigate other factors such as group ‘climate’, size and gender balance.

By its very nature, organisational behaviour crosses into many disciplines, including applied psychology, cognitive science, organisational sociology and business management. Drs Bui and Secchi conduct their research among students fresh from internships as well as employees in the private and public sector and both actively seek out companies and organisations interested in collaboration or funding research.

Typically research draws data from questionnaires or existing studies and uses quantitative and some qualitative research. Inspiration comes from a mix of brainstorming, developing existing research or at the request of funding bodies. Dr Secchi, for instance, developed a project on ‘bandwagon thinking’ after reading an article arguing the US sub-prime mortgage crisis occurred due to a kind of ‘group think.’

“US bankers began overlooking important information about loans and mortgages because everyone was doing it,” he explains.

This led Dr Secchi to investigate how this pattern might be mirrored in the workplace: “If people do not critically evaluate advice and decisions from co-workers and managers, they might be subject to bandwagon thinking,” he says.

Dr Secchi has created a theoretical framework to test how mindful employees might be; he hopes results will eventually be used by businesses.

Dr Bui, who specialises in how learning organisations develop, is keen to expand her research into systems thinking – seeing patterns of change and interrelations, rather than static snapshots.

“This is a shift of mind from seeing ourselves as separate to connected to the world, from seeing problems as caused by someone or something ‘out there’ to seeing how our own actions create problems. It is very under-researched in management,” she says.

One emerging trend Dr Secchi intends to pursue examines theories of irresponsibility. “Traditionally organisational behaviour has focused on the positive – how people feel good, responsible and like to do their job. Now we are starting to look at the causes of unethical and irresponsible behaviour.”

Imagine not being able to recognise your own child at nursery or even pick out your own face from a line-up of photos. This is just how severe face blindness or prosopagnosia can be. BU psychologist Dr Sarah Bate (pictured) says: “In extreme cases, people might withdraw socially – become depressed, leave their job, or just suffer endless embarrassment.”

Until the last decade or so, face blindness was virtually unknown, but now thousands of people, including children as young as four, have contacted BU; one of the largest research centres worldwide to investigate face blindness. Dr Bate estimates one in 50 suffers from prosopagnosia to some degree – some struggle to put a name to a face whereas others can’t recognise people they have known their whole lives.

Whether this condition is caused by nature or nurture is under debate and BU is working closely with Dartmouth College in the United States to investigate and develop training programmes to improve face recognition.

“We are seeing two types of developmental prosopagnosia (face blindness from birth),” says Dr Bate. “Those who have what we believe to be a genetic form and those who simply fail to develop the ability to recognise faces. Why is this? That is where the work needs to be done.”

Very rarely, individuals may develop prosopagnosia later in life, after a stroke or head injury. People with autism may also be unable to recognise faces. BU’s research may also provide new information about how readily the brain can adapt and change. “If the brain is very plastic, we would assume it could rewire itself and people will show great improvement in response to training. But if neural pathways are fixed, we will try and find out when it becomes reluctant to change.”

Some 10,000 people have taken BU’s online diagnostic test and 50 prosopagnosics have come in person for laboratory analysis. Researchers use a range of equipment to examine the condition: eye-tracking investigates how sufferers scan faces and researchers assess unconscious face recognition by measuring the skin conductance response.

Once diagnosed, prosopagnosics will undertake BU’s online training programme, involving an hour of visual training every day for 20 days. Participants are repeatedly shown images and learn to see differences between similar features. “We hope this will improve their ability to make fine-grained discrimination between faces, resulting in an improvement in everyday face recognition,” says Dr Bate.

“Face blindness may be influenced by factors such as not having glasses at a critical time when young or perhaps being deprived of enough social interaction as a baby,” she says. Early intervention could improve the condition.

In another significant study, researchers at BU are investigating whether the hormone oxytocin – commonly associated with creating bonds between mother and newborn – will improve face recognition in the longer term. Clinical trials at BU have already shownit brings about short-term improvement, and Dr Bate wants to see if it will work in conjunction with the training programme.

“Prosopagnosia can make life really difficult – we hope to make this training freely available to anyone who needs it,” she concludes.

Looking back at the earth’s geological record it is clear that past ecosystems were very different from those we see today. Over sixty five million years ago, for example, dinosaurs formed a key part of the earth’s ecosystem.

Dr John Stewart from BU’s School of Applied Sciences has studied the interaction between ancient ecosystems – paleoecology – and evolution of humans and other organisms over the last 100,000 years, undertaking everything from excavating cave sites in Belgium to exploring the desert of Abu Dhabi.

In one study Dr Stewart has taken existing knowledge of the geographical spread of plant and animal species throughout the warming and cooling of the Ice Ages to provide insights into human origins, including the evolution and extinction of Neanderthals.

He has also examined the rise of the ‘first Europeans’, along with the Denisovans – a newly discovered group – mysterious cousins of the Neanderthals, who occupied a vast realm stretching from the cold expanse of Siberia to the tropical forests of Indonesia.

The key insight in this work, conducted alongside Professor Chris Stringer of London’s Natural History Museum, came from understanding the important role of the refuge taken by a species from harsher conditions – known as a refugium – which has a tremendous influence on the evolutionary future of the species. Once the climate changes again, for instance as ice sheets melt, these refugia populations can expand or connect up again.

Evolution has also had a huge influence. The inhabitants are not the same as the original populations as a result of genetic mutations. The time spent apart in refuge generally serves to splinter a once unified species.

Previous research into hedgehogs, polar bears and other animals suggest that, even once an Ice Age ends and the different populations start intermingling again, they never really merge back together as a single group. This process drives important evolutionary changes, which can ultimately lead to the origins of a new species.

Ultimately, this explains why Homo sapiens are still here and other human species went extinct some 30,000 years ago: our ancestors chose the right refuge to wait out the Ice Age. Today, Dr Stewart’s work has shifted away from fossil remains to ancient DNA.

Traditionally insights into the evolution of species have come from fossils, but we now know that the genetic changes that underlie a major change in body shape can be minor.

“The most exciting development in my field has been the ability to analyse ancient DNA, which has begun to allow us to see evolution happening over the last several dozen thousand years,” explains Dr Stewart.

The claim that climate change caused the Neanderthals’ demise is supported by work by Love Dalén at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm, who has looked at the genes in 13 Neanderthal fossils found in southern Europe and western Asia.

All Neanderthal fossils more than 48,000 years old, and those found in Asia, had a higher level of genetic diversity than later European fossils, suggesting that the Neanderthals probably went through an evolutionary ‘bottleneck’ where a significant percentage of them perished.

When a bottleneck occurs, the remaining individuals are a much less diverse group, which makes it more difficult for them to evolve and adapt to a changing environment.

Dr Stewart, who is doing DNA studies in collaboration with teams at the Natural History Museum in Stockholm and the Universities of York and Royal Holloway, is now focusing on using genetics to elucidate the evolution of a wide range of creatures.

He has conducted recent studies at the cave site of Trou Al’Wesse, a refugium once occupied by Neanderthals, in Belgium. He is studying how animal populations changed as a result of Ice Age climate change to understand the evolutionary processes that have taken place over the last 50,000 years.

Dr Stewart’s work is not confined to the past though. It informs the present too. Recently there had been a proposal to eradicate the Eagle Owl because it killed other birds, such as hen harriers, and was not thought to be a native species. But Dr Stewart’s studies of fossils and more recent archaeological records revealed the bird, or something like it, has been present in Britain for up to 700,000 years. The plan to cull the birds has now been abandoned.

Most importantly this research can help us predict the future. The fear is that our everexpanding impact on the planet will trigger ecological collapse. The only way to know for sure is to look back into the past.

“By studying how organisms have reacted to past climate change,” explains Dr Stewart, “we can learn lessons about what may take place due to human-caused global warming.”

Many people associate computer animation with the latest Hollywood blockbuster, but it can also be used to explore complex psychological and social interactions, especially where they involve violence. Researchers at the National Centre for Computer Animation (NCCA) at BU have been doing just that.

Most psychology students will be familiar with the bystander effect; a classic piece of research in behavioural psychology suggesting the more people who witness a violent incident, the less likely it is that someone will intervene. It was first identified in the 1960s, but conducting research on the phenomenon has been difficult. Most experiments rely on staging fake emergencies or violent encounters using actors, which makes it tricky to gauge how genuine a response is. Dr Richard Southern and a team of researchers at the NCCA have the answer:

“We realised that to conduct experiments we had to recreate reality as best we could,” he explains. “With virtual reality, if you can trick people into believing they are in a place and the responses that occur around them in that environment are believable, then people will respond in a realistic way.”

To create their virtual world, Dr Southern and Professor Zhang used a system based at University College London (UCL) called ‘ReaCToR.’ Stereo images were projected onto the walls and floor of a small room using high-resolution digital projectors.

Participants stepping into the room wore lightweight shutter glasses similar to those used on modern 3D TVs, producing a realistic 3D sports bar scene. Head-tracking technology ensured they saw the image from the right perspective while an eight-speaker system delivered directional sound.

In a series of experiments conducted with colleagues at UCL and Lancaster University, the team recruited Arsenal FC fans and asked them to enter the ‘ReaCToR’ to look out for football memorabilia. Once inside, the participants were faced with a confrontation between two men.

“We used different scenarios to see what factors can impede whether someone will intervene when the confrontation starts,” Dr Southern explains. “We varied whether the victim in the confrontation was a supporter of Arsenal and wore an Arsenal jersey or showed little interest in the team and wore a generic red shirt. The participants intervened significantly more if they were of the same group affiliation as the victim.”

A whole host of variables were considered, with victims pleading for help in some scenarios and virtual characters demonstrating a range of different reactions. All of this provides new insight into human behaviour in the face of confrontation.

The work demonstrates the potential virtual simulations can offer when exploring human responses to violent situations, crucially, without exposing anyone to harm. This project has already attracted attention from the police and the Ministry of Defence to help train their personnel in diffusing confrontational situations. The technology can also be used to help evaluate a prisoner’s likelihood of violent re-offending and a pilot study has already yielded promising results.

Dr Southern said: “This is an enabling technology. It paves the way towards using immersive scenarios for all kinds of uses.”

During the Olympic and Paralympic Games the eyes of the world were fixed firmly on the UK. The question is how does a country continue to reap the benefits after such an event?

BU’s Dr Richard Shipway (pictured) is researching the longer term benefits that can be leveraged from the Games, with the aim of informing future policy for major sporting events. This has included working with organisations such as Visit Britain and Visit England to scrutinise their Games-related tourism activity, as well as looking to the past for inspiration.

“We are analysing everything that has worked in the past to take forward to future megaevents, such as the Sochi 2014 Winter Games, the 2014 Brazil Football World Cup and the 2016 Rio Olympics,” he confirms.

The state of Queensland, although distant from the 2000 Games host city Sydney, offers a good example. This region worked hard to capitalise on the tourism potential of hosting the Games with spin-off sports events, promoting itself as a destination for pre-Olympic and Paralympic Games training, identifying benefits for arts and cultural communities and working with local businesses to help them gain contracts and revenues associated with the Olympics.

All these activities were publicised on the global stage. As a result, Queensland won Olympic contracts worth AU $408 million (£262 million), hosted more than 2,500 Olympic and Paralympic athletes from 48 countries, and welcomed 80% of the 181 Olympic teams to train in the region, which brought a further AU $36 million (£23 million) to the economy.

Less quantifiable but equally significant benefits include heightened media exposure and new relationships with partners in the tourism industry.

International models like this will help devise recommendations for tourism legacy initiatives associated with global sports events, and with the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games estimated to generate £2.34 billion over a ten year period, it is crucial research.

The potential benefits go beyond economics though. While it is harder to measure social impacts, much of the tourism legacy will hinge on these less tangible aspects. As Dr Shipway puts it: “How can you put a value on civic pride and public engagement? You cannot place a monetary value gained from Mrs Brown carrying the Olympic Torch or the impact of Mr Jones being a 2012 volunteer – but they have a huge societal tourism impact.”

These social impacts influence how the UK is portrayed globally in the media, or the warmth of the welcome that visitors receive when they get here. They can make or break our tourism industry.

With precious little research having previously been invested in the tourism legacies of major sporting events, and a paucity of analysis over successful initiatives in this area, the work produced at BU by Dr Shipway and his colleagues should prove crucial to host nations, both now and in the future. Applied to London 2012, this is research that could keep the eyes of the world focused on the UK for years after the closing ceremonies.

Fear of getting lost, fear of not finding the toilets or being misunderstood; there are many reasons why people with dementia and the families who care for them stop going on holiday or day trips.

For people with dementia, even simple days out can pose a host of hazards. Often, families say, it is easier to just stay at home. But BU’s newly launched Dementia Institute hopes to change that.

“We have a vision,” says Professor Anthea Innes (pictured) of the newly launched BU Dementia Institute (BUDI), “that perhaps in the future, Bournemouth might become a dementia-friendly town and tourist destination.”

An expert in health and social care research, Professor Innes is collaborating with Professor Stephen Page of BU’s School of Tourism to launch pioneering research into dementia-friendly tourism – developing venues where people with dementia will feel safe and at ease to enjoy themselves.

Encouraged by a government pledge to create 20 dementia-friendly cities, towns and villages by 2015, Professor Innes is working closely with those who need these facilities most.

“Our aim is to see how tourism can respond to the needs of people with dementia and their carers and find out if and why they haven’t been able to access tourist attractions and leisure facilities,” she says. “We hope to increase their use of tourist attractions, accommodation and resorts in the South of England.”

While an exploratory pilot scheme will take place locally, Professor Innes hopes to expand the research to UK facilities. “Lots of work is currently going into dementia-friendly communities – safe cashpoints, trained staff and police for instance – but we are the only people looking specifically at leisure and tourism,” she says.

Her initial focus groups with people with dementia and their families will feed into further research with voluntary organisations, NHS services and businesses themselves. BUDI plans to develop training to shape professional dementia care in the region. In the course of its research, BUDI’s team will also interview the many tourist attractions that make up Bournemouth’s seaside resort, such as tearooms, galleries, theatres and museums.

Dorset is home to one of the largest ageing populations in England and is a good place to start. Dorset also has the lowest rate of dementia diagnosis in the country, but not because of a shortage of people with the disease. Professor Innes estimates just one in four people with dementia in Dorset have actually been diagnosed.

“That’s a shocking statistic. In other areas of the country about 4 in 10 people with dementia are diagnosed, and if you don’t have a diagnosis, you won’t be able to access services and support. You might end up in a crisis situation because you and your family have not been able to plan for the future,” she says.

Sometimes GPs are reluctant to give a diagnosis due to their perception of a lack of local services. A dementia label can also carry a stigma with families and communities – meaning people are reluctant to admit a problem, and might be unaware of the level of care available. Sometimes older people will already be in care homes, but labelled as ‘pleasantly muddled,’ rather than receiving a formal diagnosis.

A strong business case also exists for improving tourist facilities. Experts predict numbers of people with dementia will double over the next 30 years – currently the disease costs the UK economy an estimated £19 billion.

“If somewhere is labelled as dementia-friendly, it’s good for the industry and people involved. Staff will be better trained and more aware – and that’s good for levels of service provision overall,” says Professor Innes.

Every autumn 70,000 birds descend on the mudflats and salt marshes of the Severn Estuary to spend the winter refuelling before heading on to their spring breeding grounds.

The estuary is one of the largest in Europe and one of the most important wildlife habitats in the world.

While the squawking, fighting and feeding behaviour of the wildfowl and waders may appear random to onlookers, a small team at BU can predict exactly what the birds are up to.

Led by Professor Richard Stillman, they have created a computer program called MORPH that models the behaviour of birds and fish in response to a host of environmental changes.

“There is a lot of environmental change – from climate change to habitat loss – that puts pressure on plants and animals. Conservationists want to know what the effect will be on these creatures and how concerned they should be,” says Professor Stillman.

Much of the team’s work focuses on wading birds. “They occur in the winter in very large numbers around coastal sites and they have international protection. But these sites are important for people too – we use these coastal areas for recreation or shell fishing or port development,” Stillman says.

Overwintering birds are the easiest to model. They are not concerned with breeding or nest making, just survival, so their food supply is a key factor influencing their behaviour and population size.

To create the model, researchers divide a river or estuary into sections and collect information about the food, tidal and river behaviour from each. The characteristics of the birds are then added, including how quickly they feed, whether they are aggressive in close proximity and how much they need to eat.

“The model birds react in the same way as real birds. They are programmed to behave in ways that maximise their chances of survival. That means they avoid risky behaviour and always go for the best quality of food,” Professor Stillman explains.

Once the computer model has been constructed, it is run to see how well it compares to the real world. If it works, and the model birds feed in the same places on the same things and at the same times as their real-life counterparts, the programmers can start manipulating the simulated environment. This allows them to measure the potential impact of environmental changes on the birds.

MORPH has been used to assess the impact of the Severn Barrage – a current proposal to dam the estuary to generate renewable energy.

It showed that the internationally important colonies of wading birds such as redshank and curlew would have significantly less time to feed on the mudflats if the project went ahead.

In another project, BU researchers looked at how plans to build 80,000 coastal homes in the Solent would affect birds. Increased visitor numbers to the coast were shown to cut the bird’s survival rates.

Fish behaviour can also be studied. One model looks at the impact of brown trout in an English chalk stream after changes to river management and predator population size.

Other models look at the impact of changes in UK rivers on dace, pike and roach.

Professor Stillman believes the technique could be extended to farmland birds as well as ponies and deer in the New Forest. The researchers can even model the behaviour of shell-fisherman and the techniques are also being used to assess coastal construction and river management across Europe.

Some species and habitats, however, remain difficult to model, such as woodland birds where it is difficult to see how they are behaving.

“The ongoing challenge is to work out the limits of this approach with new species and habitats,” Professor Stillman concludes.

Each year our desire to get away from it all contributes to around 5% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions. Ignoring the impact of tourism on the environment would be equivalent to ignoring the carbon emissions of a developed industrialised nation.

This is why Dr Janet Dickinson and Dr Viachaslau Filimonau from BU’s School of Tourism are working on ways to reduce the carbon footprint of holidaymakers. Rather than developing punitive taxes or penalties, the research is looking at how to give people good incentives and strategies to cut down on unnecessary travel.

The BU team is starting close to home by studying the behaviour of holidaymakers at a Dorset campsite, where up to 300 people stay each week during the summer peak season. “The aim is to try to revolutionise the travel decision making process,” says Dr Janet Dickinson, senior lecturer in BU’s School of Tourism.

“The idea is to give people visibility of transport options in their immediate future through social networking and through smart phones so they can see there are opportunities to share transport, or opportunities to avoid making journeys,” she says.

The study is part of a wider Sixth Sense Transport Project – a collaboration between BU and colleagues from the Universities of Southampton, Lancaster, Edinburgh and Salford.

“We are looking at a campsite, but the same approach could be used in any holiday community – a hotel, group of cottages or caravan park,” Dr Dickinson explains.

“You have a community in the same place often all doing things at the same time and there’s a huge potential for people to make better use of travel resources. You have an awful lot of congestion in the areas linked to tourism.”

The idea is to use social networks so people can reveal anonymously to their fellow campers where they are and what they are doing. At the same time they can see what everyone else on the campsite is up to, what their immediate plans are, and what the weather and travel conditions are like.

“If you are heading to the beach tomorrow, and you know 50 other people are too, it allows you to make contact and share travel – or find out about bus routes – or warn of congestion. You might need just one item from the shops – and this could allow you to ask someone already at the shops or heading off there to pick it up for you,” suggests Dr Dickinson.

The project is first assessing holidaymaker’s attitudes to sharing. The team are finding out more about holidaymaker’s habits, what sort of information they are willing to share and how prepared they are to join forces. Then they will experiment with real life holidaymakers at the campsite, inviting them to try out smart phone applications designed to help them on their break.

Other parts of the project are looking at social networking in schools to help parents share transport and promote ‘walking buses’, which would see supervised groups of children walking to school on predetermined routes. Another is looking at reducing the carbon footprint of the logistics industry – the moving around of goods by lorry and train.

“The project is not about developing an application for a smart phone, but finding out about people’s travel decision making and whether their behaviour can be changed if they realise 200 other people living alongside them are about to make the same journey,” Dr Dickinson explains.

There are more than four million anglers in the UK and the sport generates an estimated £3.5 billion for the economy. But research by Dr Demetra Andreou and her colleagues at BU’s Centre for Conservation Ecology and Environmental Science has uncovered a new threat that could put many of the native fish species that UK anglers rely on at risk.

The culprit is a single celled parasite called Sphaerothecum destruens; also known as the Rosette Agent. Dr Andreou’s work has revealed that the parasite has the potential to cause widespread harm to many popular species of UK fish, including salmon, bream, carp and roach.

With her results suggesting mortality levels of up to 90% in native salmon and 53% in bream, it could prove a nightmare scenario for the angling community. If the parasite got into the UK’s aquaculture industry, the impact could be devastating. “Here we have a parasite that could cause massive decline in native fish,” says Dr Demetra Andreou. “Yet no one even knows which rivers it is in.”

The problem, she explains, is that the fish die in small numbers, just a few each day. Such small losses in a river can easily go unnoticed as the sick individuals get picked off by predators, or the bodies get washed away.

“These parasites looked like one that had been found before in salmon in the US aquaculture industry,” explains Dr Andreou. In the US the Rosette Agent had devastated salmon populations, causing up to 90% of salmon stocks to die.

Dr Andreou and her colleagues set about trying to determine whether the sub-type of the parasite found in the UK could cause similar harm to UK fish species.

By studying salmon, bream, carp and roach with the parasite, they were able to accurately determine the impact the parasite could have on the fish without having to account for other changes in environment such as temperature and food, which can complicate studies in the wild.

They found that UK Atlantic salmon are just as susceptible to the parasite as their American cousins and coarse fish like bream, carp and roach were also susceptible to the parasite.

Despite this, very little is known about how many UK lakes, rivers and fisheries the parasite is present in. It does not feature on a list of parasites that the Environment Agency routinely tests for, but Dr Andreou and her colleagues hope to change that.

“One of the things we are trying to do is to get it listed on the Environment Agency’s Novel and Category 2 parasites. This means that when fish are moved from one water body to another, they will check for this parasite as part of the health check.”

The Environment Agency is already attempting to eradicate topmouth gudgeon, an unaffected carrier of the Rosette Agent, from UK waterways. The agency has already removed hundreds of thousands of the three-inch long fish from English rivers.

“We are also developing a way of testing for the parasite in the water,” says Dr Andreou.

“By filtering the water we can extract DNA onto the filter paper and using polymerase chain reaction (PCR), we can detect whether the parasite’s genetic information is in the water. It can help to narrow down the places where we should look in the fish community for the parasite.”

Dr Andreou is also now focusing on understanding what conditions are needed for the Rosette Agent to cause an outbreak. She believes that as some species of fish are less affected than others, it is important to determine how different species compositions can influence disease emergence.