Professional summary

Dr Joe Taylor is a senior scientist in molecular ecology at UKCEH Wallingford. His research focuses on molecular microbial ecology, working across the tree of microbial life, with a focus on eukaryotic microbial interactions with biogeochemical cycles. He has strong expertise in molecular analysis of microbial communities and associated bioinformatics.

Joe's past research focused on microbial carbon cycling in aquatic systems, using stable isotope probing and high-throughput sequencing to identify degrading organisms of phytoplankton produced compounds. His work was the first to look at temporal variation in fungal communities in coastal waters and link their abundance and diversity to particulate organic carbon. More recently this work has looked at environmental DNA in river phytobenthos and lagoon benthic systems. He is an associate editor of the Journal of the Marine Biological Association.

Joe has a BSc. in Marine and Freshwater Biology and a DPhil on the response of microbial communities to change in environment and extracellular polymeric substances in estuarine littoral zones, both from the University of Essex. He has previously worked at the Universities of Westminster, York, Salford, Bradford and at the Marine Biological Association. 

Other Publications

Taylor, J.D., dS Rodrigues, L., Kessler, F., Secchi, E. and Proietti, M.C., 2022. Floating plastics and their associated biota in the Western South Atlantic. Science of The Total Environment, 805, p.150186.

Taylor, J.D., 2020. Diverse groups of fungi are associated with plastics in the surface waters of the Western South Atlantic and the Antarctic Peninsula. Molecular Ecology https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.15444