Funding for research on the Scottish island of Rum has been awarded to Sheila Pankhurst and Nancy Harrison in the Department of Life Sciences, in collaboration with colleagues from the Food and Environment Research Agency, Fera (an executive agency of Defra).

The award, worth nearly £50,000 over three years, is from Scottish Natural Heritage and the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, and will fund a PhD studentship to investigate the biology of introduced brown rats on the Scottish Island of Rum. The island is a National Nature Reserve, and is also designated as a Special Protection Area (SPA) for its seabird populations, and particularly its Manx shearwater breeding colony, which is believed to represent nearly a quarter of the world population. In recent years, there has been concern that numbers of breeding Manx shearwaters on Rum may be declining. A major reason for this concern is the known presence of Norway or brown rats in the shearwater colonies. Rats are predators of shearwater eggs and chicks, and the research work that Anglia Ruskin and Fera will carry out will provide a better understanding of the ecology of the rats on the island.

Staff and students from the Department of Life Sciences have been visiting Rum each year for more than a decade now, for an October wildlife-watching field trip to coincide with the red deer rutting season (the deer on the island have been featured in several episodes of the BBC's AutumnWatch series, with presenter Simon King following the fortunes of some of the red deer stags on the island). Students have also been able to gain hands-on experience of conservation and field survey work on the island. Since 2007, first year undergraduate students from the Department of Life Sciences have assisted with rat trapping work in the Manx shearwater colonies on Rum, and since 2009, students have also taken part in annual survey work on the island's native wood mice.

The studentship will be known as the Magnus Magnusson SNH-SEPA PhD studentship, in recognition of the former chairman of SNH, who died in 2007. Magnus Magnusson was best known as a television presenter, and also wrote a popular natural history book about the wildlife on Rum (Rum: Nature's Island).