Robert A. Cheke

Robert "Bob" Alexander Cheke, FLS , (born July 14, 1948 in London ) is a British ecologist . He is Professor of Tropical Zoology at the University of Greenwich's Natural Resources Institute, based on the Medway campus in Chatham, and Visiting Professor in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London .

Life

Cheke began working as a bird ringer for the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) in 1966 . From January to June 1966 he was a research assistant at the BTO. In 1968 and 1969 he took part in expeditions at the University of Oxford to Ghana and the Cherangani Hills in Kenya . In 1970 he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology from the University of St Andrews . In 1974 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Leeds. PhD in entomology . In the same year he took part in a BOU expedition to the Mascarenes .

Cheke specializes in applied ecology , particularly insect-related problems in the tropics. He has more than 40 years experience in the field and laboratory research in Africa, focusing on the biology and control of black flies and the vectors of onchocerciasis (river blindness), but he also did research on other vectors of medical and veterinary importance, as well as agricultural pests like locusts and bloodbeak weavers . From 1979 to 1990 he worked with the Onchocerciasis Control Program of the World Health Organization in West Africa . He also worked on black flies projects in Ghana examining the potential impacts of climate change on river blindness and onchocerciasis transmission dynamics. He is currently on a consortium of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) that studies mosquitoes in England and is working with staff in China on models for the transmission of dengue and other diseases.

In 1985 Cheke contributed to Statistics in Ornithology by BJT Morgan and PM North. In 1996 he published The Birds of Togo: An Annotated Checklist with J. Frank Walsh . In 2001 he published the book Sunbirds: A Guide to the Sunbirds, Spiderhunters, Sugarbirds and Flowerpeckers of the World with Clive F. Mann . In 2008 he and Mann wrote the family chapters on nectar birds and mistletoe-eaters in the thirteenth volume of the Handbook of the Birds of the World . In 2009 he was a scientific advisor for the television documentary Swarm: Nature's Incredible Invasions (German: The Secret of Swarms ). In 2018 he published the book Desert Locust Plagues: Controlling the Ancient Scourge with Colin Everard .

literature

• John E. Pemberton: Who's Who in Ornithology , Buckingham Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0-95149-658-9 , p. 75

Web links

• Employee profile at Gnatwork
• Employee profile at the Natural Resources Institute
• Employee profile at the London Center for Neglected Tropical Disease Research
• Literature by and about Robert A. Cheke in the WorldCat bibliographic database