Rate My Professor Stu Borland

Stu Borland is the Workshop Technician in the Department of Zoology at the University of Otago, where he plays a vital role in supporting the department's research and teaching activities through his technical expertise. His responsibilities include designing, constructing, and maintaining specialized equipment essential for experimental setups in diverse fields of zoological research. Borland's contributions have been crucial for studies involving aquatic and terrestrial organisms, environmental monitoring, and behavioral observations.

Throughout his tenure, Borland has provided invaluable technical assistance acknowledged in numerous peer-reviewed publications and doctoral theses produced by the Department of Zoology. He offered technical support for the further miniaturisation of Thermochron iButtons used to study thermal environments of reptiles, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology in 2018. In 2020, he supplied Kreisel tanks for research on egg laying and embryo development of Octopus huttoni, featured in Marine and Freshwater Research, and contributed to investigations into heat and water loss dilemmas in nocturnal geckos. More recently, his help with field equipment supported a 2023 study on invertebrate kick-netting for microplastic monitoring in Limnologica, and a 2024 paper on microplastics' effects on riverine macroinvertebrate communities in Science of the Total Environment. He also assisted with setups for heatwaves and carbon dioxide enrichment impacts on invertebrate drift patterns, published in 2024. Borland led aspects of floral diversity impacts on bumblebee colony development research in 2025, and constructed behavioral observation tanks for ethological studies. His workshop skills enabled mesocosm experiments for microplastics in New Zealand lake food webs, emerging organic contaminants in lotic ecosystems using ExStream systems, and field equipment for thermal heterogeneity in cool-temperate retreats. Doctoral theses benefiting from his expertise cover avian malaria dynamics, hairworm infection dynamics in aquatic and terrestrial hosts, consistency of zebrafish behaviors, advancing invasive small mammal elimination with GPS backpacks, cognitive ability in ant colonies, and parasite perspectives in coastal marine ecosystems. Borland's consistent support has underpinned a wide array of ecological, physiological, and parasitological inquiries at the University of Otago.