Rate My Professor Demetra Andreou

Dr Demetra Andreou serves as Principal Academic in Environmental Science at Bournemouth University in the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences within the Faculty of Science and Technology. Her research focuses on three interconnected streams that support species conservation management. The first stream addresses conservation of migratory species through genomic tools, environmental DNA detection and telemetry, applied to species such as the sea lamprey and allis and twaite shad, with funding from the European Commission and the Severn Rivers Trust. The second stream examines emerging disease and host-parasite co-evolution, using the parasite Sphaerothecum destruens as a model to study factors leading to disease emergence and demonstrating rapid establishment in new hosts, alongside investigations into host-parasite dynamics and parasite impacts in trophic webs using models such as Pomphorhynchus tereticollis. The third stream investigates microplastic levels in freshwaters across abiotic and biotic samples, including cycling through food webs in the presence or absence of trophically transmitted parasites, supported by funding from the Fisheries Society of the British Isles. Her work contributes to broader understanding in parasitology, molecular ecology and invasive species biology. Key publications include studies on the origin and invasion of Sphaerothecum destruens (2017), associated disease risk from the introduced pathogen (2016), and microplastic-stressor responses in freshwater fishes (2024), among numerous journal articles on topics ranging from eDNA applications in shad spawning distribution (2019) to host-parasite evolutionary history (2018).